Deep in the Drowning Green
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: Oneshot, HPSS slash. The hunt for Bellatrix's Horcrux will take Harry and Snape into an alternate universe, into confrontation with a legendary monster, and into conflict and collision with one another. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Deep in the Drowning Green

**Pairing** Harry/Snape

**Rating:** R

**Warnings**: Profanity, violence, sex, ambiguous ending. Assumes that Snape survived DH.

**Word count**: ~37,000

**Summary**: The hunt for Bellatrix's Horcrux will take Harry and Snape into another dimension, into a confrontation with a legendary monster, and into conflict and collision with each other.

**Disclaimer**: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.

**Author's Note**: This was written for cluegirl in the 2010 hds_beltane fest, but not posted elsewhere until now. Many thanks to my beta, who went above and beyond the call of duty.

**Deep in the Drowning Green**

Harry didn't believe the rumors. Anyone could spread a rumor.

He didn't believe the immediate conclusion that the Ministry tried to jump to for the first killing. As he knew to his disgust, particularly since the war, anyone could kill.

He didn't believe the stammering witness who was paraded before the Wizengamot to try to persuade them to justify extreme force. Anyone could stammer and blush and pale and even faint, if that was necessary. Harry had seen more tricks from witnesses in three months of being an Auror than he had expected to see in a lifetime.

When he saw her for himself, he began to believe.

* * *

Harry had chosen a house on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. When the doors of Hogwarts had closed behind him for the last time, he found that he wasn't in such a hurry to leave after all. True, the school held some of his most horrible memories, but also some of his best. It was a place of the past.

Harry was sick of trying to leave the past behind.

True, he was away most of the day, and often a good portion of the night, during Auror training, and his schedule was only worse since he had become a full Auror. But he still got to spend a lot of time at the house, sometimes even entire weekends, and he had found that he liked looking at a garden that was his own and tending the small flowers that were all he grew in it and looking over its stone walls towards the walls of Hogwarts.

He slept in a bedroom that overlooked the garden. It had wood-paneled walls and reminded Harry both greatly and not at all of the cupboard. He was fond of it, and of the thick scratchy blankets that draped the foot of the bed, a present from Hermione, and of the Chudley Cannons poster that hung on the wall, a gift from Ron. He leaned the new Firebolt he'd bought for Quidditch the summer after the war against the door and considered the place the most comfortable room in the house.

The Killing Curse came through the window. Only the way Harry had arranged the bed meant it went over his head instead of _into _it. At least his training had been thorough enough to make him snatch his wand up a moment later and roll off the bed and then underneath it, listening intently for breathing all the while.

It was there. Laughter like a ghost's laugh. Thick, creaking footsteps, that made Harry think at first, with the dreams still clinging in shreds and tatters to his mind, that an enormous puppet was coming after him. A sharp face that poked into his window, rising as if fearless, staring into the shadows.

Searching for him.

Bellatrix Lestrange.

Harry took a deep breath, put aside all the jabber in his brain about how she was _dead_, and flung himself out from under the bed. There was no way to disguise his rush. He didn't try. He just rose up in front of the window and used the extra-powerful Blasting Curse that his trainers had told him over and over again not to use, trying his best just to kill her, kill her and have done with it.

He hit her. She flew the length of the garden and hit the wall. There was a noise like a mousetrap going off. Harry rose up with his hand on the windowsill, half-kneeling, ready to duck again if she picked herself up again.

She picked herself up again.

This time, Harry could see the source of the creaking and the puppet-like noise. She moved with the shuffling, limping gait of someone on strings, and when she opened her mouth, she produced the ghost-laughter he had heard before. She could be hurt, and Harry suspected she was carrying a lot of wounds around in her body that hadn't healed or barely healed.

But she couldn't die.

"You can't kill me, baby," she said. "Small chance that you'd manage. You're too _little._" And she chanted some spell he'd never heard before but which made his elbow joints explode in pure white-hot fire.

Unfortunately for Bellatrix, Harry had a high pain tolerance. It made his trainers shake their heads-and Hermione, sometimes-but it saved his life now. He ignored the spell and managed to lift his wand arm anyway, calling out the incantation that would wrap her up in a magic-proof cage. If he couldn't kill her, he would capture her and let the Ministry deal with her.

But she was gone before he finished the first syllable. Harry smiled grimly. She'd learned some caution, then.

He leaned his head on the windowsill and whimpered a little, because his elbows _really _hurt. Then he stood up and went to report the attack.

And ask for healing from St. Mungo's. That was important, too.

* * *

"So she's really hunting you." Ron said it emptily, like an echo in a tomb, and put down his teacup so hard on the edge of the table Harry thought it would crack. Then he put his hands over his face and dragged them slowly down, breathing so rapidly that Harry winced. "Fuck."

"Yeah." Harry stared into his own teacup and wondered if they should be discussing this in the middle of their office. Then he shook his head. The rumors of Bellatrix's return were already everywhere, and he thought she was probably too mad to have allies in the Ministry who would report their words to her.

_Besides, she already knows she attacked me, _he thought, touching his elbow with the flat of his hand. _And so do I._

"How did she survive?" Ron tilted back and asked the question of the ceiling.

Harry swallowed. "I have a theory." It was one Ron wouldn't like. Ron sometimes seemed to have decided that a large part of their experiences during the war were a dream. Harry had mentioned the Sword of Gryffindor the other day, and Ron had shaken his head in wonder and asked what made him think of that. Harry spoke these words while keeping a cautious eye on Ron, ready to back away if he came too close to an old wound.

Ron looked at him, the flat expression on his face speaking his guess.

"A Horcrux," Harry said. "We _know _that your mum hit her with the Killing Curse, just like I hit Voldemort with the reflected Killing Curse when I was a baby. And she looked inhuman. Voldemort was a monster, too, by the time he came back from death."

"She didn't look like the same kind of monster, you said." Ron turned away to rearrange the paperwork on his desk, and his turned back was like a shut door. _No, _Harry thought in hopelessness, eyeing him, _a shut door would have more tendency to open. _"Surely that indicates that she survived by some other method."

"We don't know everything about Horcruxes," Harry said. "But what we _do _know suggests that it's the only way to survive a Killing Curse." He smiled, though he had the impression that his smile had the same desperation as the painted expression on a clown's face, and tried to lighten the mood. "Unless you're suggesting that someone loved Bellatrix enough to make a sacrifice of love for her the way my mum did for me."

"I don't want to joke about this," Ron said, and Harry winced and shut up for a long moment when he heard his voice.

"Sorry," Harry said at last. "But I do think that a Horcrux is our best guess. We never did find all the collection of Dark artifacts and Dark Arts books that Bellatrix and her husband were supposed to have gathered. And at least one of the missing books had information about how to make Horcruxes in it."

Ron turned around and stared at him this time. "How do you know that?"

"I kept track of it," Harry said, meeting Ron's eyes and wishing he knew why his palms were clammy and his forehead hot. After all, it wasn't as though Ron was the only one who would have liked to forget the war, or the only one who had dangerous knowledge about Horcruxes. "I thought-well, I reckon I never trusted that all the knowledge of how to make them would have died with Voldemort."

"It didn't," Ron muttered, and lowered his head onto his folded arms. "It survives in us."

"I know," Harry said quietly. "But right now, we need to find out if that's what she's using, and then where it is and how to destroy it if that's true."

Ron sat with his head down for a few more minutes. He was taking deep, long breaths that made him sound as if he had a broken bone. But Harry sat still and left him alone, because he knew the signs. Ron was getting ready to take on a big task that he really hated. This was the way he'd acted before he went down to the holding cells to question a Dark wizard who'd murdered seven women by cutting them all into thirds, and he'd eventually got the answers that sealed the case.

Ron finally raised his head, and said, "Sorry, mate. If you were thinking that it would come up again someday, I just hoped that we were all done with it."

Harry nodded his acceptance. "So where do we begin?"

* * *

He should have anticipated Ron's answer to that question, Harry thought later, looking around at the neatly stacked, leather-smelling shelves of the Weasley-Granger library. For Ron, still, most questions began and ended with Hermione.

"She _could _have a Horcrux," Hermione said doubtfully, blowing dust away from a page she was examining. "Grilius, in 769, said that sometimes Horcruxes brought back bodies that had the remnants of old injuries in them." She turned the page, and her voice had a trace of the eager, chill threat Harry imagined in the voice of a pack of hounds hunting down prey. "In fact, apparently that's the way Horcruxes normally function."

"Normally?" Harry asked, thinking of Voldemort and trying to put the word Hermione had just spoken into that context.

Hermione shot him a sharp look. "I meant, when someone only has one of them. Not seven, the way Voldemort had."

Harry nodded again. Now he was examining the windows of the library and the wards that crackled behind them. Hermione took the safety of her books seriously. Still, he wondered if the wards would hold up should Bellatrix take it into her head to attack here.

And she might very well. Voldemort's madness had at least been purposeful, and the connection Harry had to him through the scar had made him feel as though he had some level of control over his enemy's actions, illusory as that was. Harry did not think he understood anything of the jagged, broken-pattern way in which Bellatrix's mind worked.

"How are we going to find the Horcrux?" he asked, thinking of that. "The Horcrux could be anything. It could be hidden anywhere. Bellatrix could tell us straight out what and where it was and we probably wouldn't understand her." He clenched his fists in his lap and swore softly, thinking about it.

"Well, we aren't going to get anywhere by acting as though we'll lose before we begin the battle," Hermione said, in the heavy tone that was meant to weigh down Harry's emotions like a paperweight so he could consider them calmly. "For the moment, we'll assume that Bellatrix's Horcrux is a Dark artifact. She learned the idea from Voldemort. Wouldn't she have wanted to imitate him in every way possible? That means she would choose powerful magical objects, perhaps from the Founders. There are a limited number of those."

Harry took a deep breath, feeling as though he were surfacing from far beneath the water. "You're right, of course, Hermione," he said. "Do you think we ought to make sure we know where the Sword of Gryffindor is?"

Hermione gave him a faint smile. "I don't think she would have had a chance to make a Horcrux of that," she said soothingly. "We had it too much of the time, and we would have noticed a change in it." Harry opened his mouth to dispute that, but Hermione held up a hand, and Harry subsided into grumbling silence. "We would have," Hermione said. "But we know that she had access to Hogwarts during that year when Snape was Headmaster, if she wanted it. That means we should check-oh, perhaps the Sorting Hat, or other things around the school that might belong to the Founders. I know there are objects we never investigated and we didn't know about at the time. I only learned of them years later." By now her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushing with the excitement of the hunt. "We'll find it, Harry."

Harry relaxed. He would participate in the hunt, of course, because as much as he loved Hermione, he had lost his faith in her infallibility over the years. But it was good to be reminded that the search was not hopeless.

It was good to have friends.

* * *

After five hours in a dusty, musty, rusty vault deep in the Ministry that stored any artifacts reputed to have the most minor of connections with the Founders, Harry was beginning to reconsider his stance on hope.

They hadn't found anything at Hogwarts. Though McGonagall, with an air of dubiousness that made Harry feel as if it were about to storm the entire time they were in her office, had let them examine the Sorting Hat, they found no sign of tampering with it. Nor was there a single artifact in Hogwarts that had a trace of the dark Horcrux magic. McGonagall had told them tartly that she rather thought the professors would have noticed by now; Harry had been obliged to confess what the Horcruxes were when he returned to finish his NEWTs on the pain of penetrating stares, and McGonagall had come up with spells that would supposedly detect the presence of their magic on school grounds after that. No, Bellatrix's Horcrux was not hidden at Hogwarts.

Hermione had promptly suggested Gringotts, in the Lestrange vault, and they had spent at fortnight trying to negotiate with the goblins to see any ruins that might be left. The goblins were not impressed with their promise not to ransack the bank again. In the end, however, that produced nothing, either; apparently most of the contents of the Lestrange vault had turned to slag and dross during their escape with the dragon.

After that, it was the vault in the Ministry. The Department of Mysteries gathered mostly Dark artifacts and powerful ones, but they also, as Hermione lectured Harry in the lift all the way down, picked up things of legendary interest, under the pretense of keeping them safe for future generations who wanted to know the history of wizardkind. If the artifacts were only ornamental instead of useful, then the pretense became reality. There was an enormous collection of what were supposed to be Slytherin's robes, Ravenclaw's wands, Hufflepuff's personal spellbooks, and Gryffindor's chamberpots. As well as plenty of other things that made Harry feel historians must be mad.

He put aside yet another wand that McGonagall's Horcrux-detecting spell had failed to work on, and sighed. Hermione was still head-deep in a box of books, occasionally grunting like a satisfied pig. Harry shook his head with a frown and sat back.

"Do you think we'll find anything here?" he asked, when Hermione was only occupied with one book instead of a whole box and he thought it less likely she would start at the sound of his voice and topple over.

Hermione stared at him. "I've already discovered five spells that have been lost for centuries," she said.

"Yes," Harry said, "but do you think it's likely Bellatrix's Horcrux is here?"

Hermione seemed to recall herself and sat down on one of the boxes, which creaked. "No," she admitted reluctantly. "Even if they didn't know what it was, the Department of Mysteries would probably have sensed the Dark magic in her Horcrux and made sure it was safely destroyed."

"Or kept somewhere," Harry muttered. Though he knew Unspeakables were supposed to destroy things that could be dangerous, his experience working with them during Auror training, let alone the time he'd been here during his fifth year, suggested that they had a stronger than normal fascination with shaking and poking things to see how they worked.

Hermione glanced at him repressively. "This, they would have destroyed," she said, and Harry had to nod.

Then Hermione drooped a bit. "But I don't know any other source of Founder's artifacts," she admitted. "We might have to research for months before we even learn what object she could have taken, let alone find it."

"And we don't have months," Harry said, thinking of the attack Bellatrix had launched last night. Her victims hadn't died. It might have been kinder if they had.

"I know," Hermione said. The weariness in her voice seemed to reach out and wrap around Harry like a dense, dusty smoke, choking off the slight hilarity that had been keeping him going so far. He stared at the floor between his feet and wondered what he was supposed to do. He was an Auror, but that didn't mean he could protect people from Bellatrix. He had killed Voldemort and helped destroy the Horcruxes, but then, he'd had a lot of help from Dumbledore-at least some idea of what the Horcruxes were, if not where to look. What was he supposed to do this time?

"It would be so much simpler if she _had _imitated Voldemort," Hermione said. "But I don't think she did."

Inspiration hit Harry with the force of sunlight. He sat up and said, "What if she _did_? But what if she didn't use a Founder's artifact?"

Hermione frowned at him. "You think she might have used some personal object, like the diary? But that doesn't leave us any better off. We don't know what might have mattered to Bellatrix when she was a child."

"What about a living creature?" Harry insisted. "Voldemort made a Horcrux out of Nagini, and Bellatrix would have been around Nagini a lot more than any of the other Horcruxes. Maybe that made some difference to her madness and she decided to make one based on her. It's at least worth a try, isn't it?"

Hermione gasped, her expression brightening. "Harry, you're a _genius_," she said, thus ensuring that this memory would become one Harry often put in his Pensieve to relive. "Of _course_. We'll still have to look for what she used, but at least we can look in the records that were taken from the places she lived during the war and see what creatures she was around!" She flung her arms around Harry and hugged him tight. "_Thank _you!"

Harry didn't see what he'd done other than come up with an idea, but he understood after a moment of hugging Hermione back. He had given her a direction to start her research in, and for Hermione, there was no more valuable gift.

* * *

Harry woke groggily. It seemed to him he'd been having an interesting dream, where he walked through flowering meadows hand-in-hand with Ginny and everything was working out all right for them. It would have been great if that dream could have replaced the reality, where he and Ginny had realized sadly that they weren't suited to each other and drifted apart. Waking up to something hovering at the foot of his bed was a distinct letdown from that.

The first thing he thought of was Bellatrix, or at least the ghost of one of her victims, and he grabbed his wand. The thing didn't cackle, though, and when Harry cast _Lumos _on his wand, he saw it was an owl.

The owl landed on the bed, and Harry eyed it for a minute before he reached out and took the letter from it. It was battered-looking and disreputable. It had black feathers with glimpses of gold underneath them when it shifted, as though it had robbed a dragon's hoard. Its beak appeared to have been put on its face by someone with no notion of what a beak should look like; it was sharp, pale, and resembled dried ivory. It had heavy, jagged talons with claws Harry could swear looked like iron.

It didn't bite him or tear his beating heart from his chest, though, which Harry decided would have to be good enough for right now. He opened the letter, reading it with one eye while he kept the other eye on the owl.

_Potter, _said the letter, in writing as jagged as the owl's beak, _you will never find Bellatrix's Horcrux with the clumsy efforts you have made so far. She has hidden it in another place, sideways from the world. The only way you can find and kill it is to go to that place, which is not simple to find._

Harry narrowed his eyes. The letter was unsigned, the handwriting familiar enough to stir a faint memory but no more than that. Who in the world could know about Bellatrix's Horcrux? Harry turned the letter over, seeking for a clue, but it was only one sheet of thin parchment, without a marking on the other side.

The clumsy owl beat its wings with a sound like ringing bells and lifted into the air, hovering for a moment in a way that made it saw back and forth. Then it landed on Harry's shoulder and drove its claws into his flesh.

"Ouch!" hissed Harry, rearing back and holding up his wand at the awkward angle necessary to deal with a threat so close. He was going to hex the owl's head off before it took a fancy to his ear.

The owl opened its mouth, and arctic breath streamed over Harry. He thought he heard it say something, a single word, before the familiar pull of a Portkey seized him.

Harry went cursing, and not only because he had never heard of anyone making an owl into a Portkey. The word had been familiar, in a voice that at least played the right chords in his memory.

"_Imbecile_," the voice had said.

It was Snape's.

* * *

Harry landed with a bump on something relatively soft, with a sense of largeness around him that told him he was outside. He scrambled up and around in a circle, wand aimed at-whatever he needed to aim it at.

There was no one in sight. Harry was, so far as he could see in the pitiful light his _Lumos _Charm cast, standing on an expanse of scrubby, short grass next to a large lake. There was a crooked shape in the distance on the lakeshore that might be a tree. To the left of him was a tiny house as patched-together and ramshackle as the owl.

Said horrid bird lifted from his shoulder and flapped heavily towards it. Harry stared at the house and waited for something to happen.

Nothing did, except that the door of the house opened to let the owl in. Then it closed, and silence lapped around Harry like the water on the edge of the lake.

Harry made the _Lumos _brighter still and held up the wand, turning in a slow circle. No matter where or how far he looked, the country remained essentially featureless. The single tree beside the lake was the only one Harry could see, and the way its dark branches curled back on themselves suggested that it wasn't the healthiest plant that had ever lived. The grass stretched out in a broad, flat plain. No walls, no other dwellings but the house, no hills. Harry sniffed and thought there was a faint, alien taste to the air, tart, like lemons, but it faded before he could be certain.

_Or did I get used to it?_

Harry glanced uneasily at the lake. It had a wavy bank rather than a curved one, and it was big enough that it was hard to see the far side.

_Of course, the darkness probably doesn't help with that, _Harry thought, and edged forwards. He wondered if the lake contained a monster, the way the one at Hogwarts contained the squid, and what he would do if it did.

The whole time, a persistent beating in the back of his head told him to go into the house. Harry ignored it. He half-suspected what he would find waiting for him there, and he didn't want to face it.

Something caught him across the shins. Harry stumbled and rolled immediately to his knees, wand up to blast it.

No monster, from the lake or otherwise, met his eyes. Instead, Harry saw, he had tripped over a carved stone, with scratches in its surface that obviously weren't natural. Harry bent down and studied them.

Most of them, he couldn't make sense of, and he didn't know if that was because of their awkward shape, the extreme age of the carving, or something else. But he did puzzle out two words that made his fingers curl hard into the dirt.

_Godric Gryffindor._

Harry swallowed. _What is this place?_

"Potter. Stop crawling through the dirt and come inside like an adult wizard." The voice paused, then added, "If you have merely grown taller instead of more intelligent, then feel free to ignore that invitation."

The voice was the same as the one that had come out of the owl's beak. Harry stood up, still keeping his eyes on the stone until the moment when he _had _to turn around and face Snape, for his self-respect if nothing else.

Snape had sallow skin still. He had a jagged nose that looked as if he used it to peck eyes out-though Harry had to admit that it wasn't as ugly as the beak of the owl sitting on his shoulder. He had a long series of parallel scratches down the side of his throat, which Harry guessed must be the mark of Nagini's fangs. If anything was unexpected, it was only the interest in the dark eyes that fastened on Harry, and the fact that he seemed to have found a potion that rendered his hair even _more _like the strings of a mop.

Harry wanted to say something like, _But you're dead!_ That couldn't be true, though, not if Snape was standing in front of him. He had tried to get beyond stating the obvious in the past few years. So he gripped his wand and said nothing.

"Tell me, Potter," Snape continued, pacing forwards with slow, stately steps that nonetheless made the owl on his shoulder jog back and forth until it tightened its grip, "are all Aurors as poorly trained as you? Or would anyone in the Auror Department have fallen victim to a Portkey as simple as the one I used on you?"

Harry clenched his jaw until he thought he could feel one of his teeth crack. He wanted to say there was nothing simple about turning an owl into a Portkey, and that anyone else would have fallen victim to the same trick. He wanted to say that it would have made a lot more sense for Snape to just send him the information about Bellatrix's Horcrux, if he had it, in the letter instead of bringing him here. He wanted to say-

_Oh, all sorts of things._

In the end, he relaxed his jaw long enough to say, "What did you want from me, Snape?" He was proud of himself. His voice was as bland and rough as the grass under their feet.

Snape stopped walking closer and studied him like a Potions ingredient that wasn't as dead as he'd thought it was. Harry did nothing, said nothing, just gripped his wand and stared back.

Then Snape said, in the most pleasant tone Harry had ever heard him use-because it was the most neutral-"Come inside," and turned back to the cottage.

Harry followed him, because it would look childish not to. Then he caught the thoughts he was using and snorted.

_This is Snape. Whoever invented the term "childish grudge" probably foresaw his existence and invented it especially for him. Why do you worry what he thinks of you?_

Harry flipped one shoulder up in a quick shrug, even though there was no one to see it. Well, he cared what he thought of himself. And the more he irritated Snape, the longer the man would probably keep whatever information he had to himself, and the more of Harry's time he would waste.

It was as good a rationale as any for ducking inside the cottage behind Snape and looking around.

Harry's first impression was that he didn't want to sneeze in here. Every shelf, every box on the floor, every table, was crowded with glass vials or cauldrons, most of them filled to the brim with disgusting liquids. (Well, Harry didn't _know _they were disgusting, but they had enough thickness and odd combinations of colors to look like it). The only clear area was around the largest cauldron in the center of the room, which made grumbling sloppy sounds to itself. Harry looked a second time, but didn't see another door. He wondered where Snape slept and used the loo, and then decided that he didn't absolutely need that knowledge and so would disregard his curiosity.

Snape turned around to face him. In the dim light from a fireplace that flickered invisibly behind a table, the scars from Nagini's bite looked even worse. Harry studied him in silence and decided that he wouldn't ask how Snape had survived. Probably some combination of Potions knowledge and sheer bloody refusal to die.

"Why did you contact me?" he asked.

Snape curled his lip. "Why, Potter, I should think that would be obvious," he said. "I am giving you another chance to be a hero. You _do _so enjoy it, and my world is marginally more pleasant when I see you acting competent."

Harry gripped his hands together behind his back and wondered if Snape wanted him to yell. Probably. That way, he could feel superior.

What he couldn't have any way of knowing-wherever Snape had been for the last four years, Harry doubted it was in regular contact with the wizarding world-was that the Head Auror had insisted that Harry work on managing his temper. He still lost it when someone committed a murder or bragged about committing one in front of him, or when Ron got drunk and wouldn't leave certain embarrassing memories alone, but it would take a lot more than a few insults to make him shout now.

_Which doesn't prevent me from filing down my teeth with the grinding, _Harry thought, and said, "Fine. But what do _you_ get out of it?"

Snape paused, studying him again. Harry had no idea what he hoped to see in Harry's face this time, and tried to maintain the bland stare back.

Snape turned away at last, and said, "This place is sideways from the real world, a pocket of dead history that the Dark Lord discovered, investigated, and decided held no further use. It has a use for me. I can find the Potions ingredients I need here, and conduct my brewing in peace. But Bellatrix has hidden her Horcrux here." Harry was impressed. The malice Snape used to form those words outweighed even the sort he'd shown Harry when he was screaming that he was the Half-Blood Prince. "Its presence disturbs me. I wish to destroy it and regain my solitude."

Harry waited for something more and repeated, "Fine. But why can't you destroy it yourself?" He ran his eyes over the ranks of potions again. "I imagine you're fully capable."

Snape gave him yet another odd look. Harry hoped he would find something else to do soon. The stay in this place, wherever it was, would get boring if that was Snape's only occupation.

"My potions have no effects on the Horcrux," Snape said, when he had gathered whatever information his silent stare from Harry seemed intended to gather and turned his eyes away again. He put a hand on a stirring rod in the middle of the cauldron and moved it idly back and forth. "Neither do my spells. The only spell that might, Fiendfyre, does not function in this universe, where it was never discovered. But I have managed to damage its defenses. I am not weak, though I have come near to dying." He touched the side of his throat. Harry wondered if he knew he was doing it; it looked like a habitual gesture. "You are someone who has strength of your own." He glared at Harry this time, which was a bit more comforting because it was more familiar. "Together, we may be able to destroy it."

"Right," Harry said. He wanted to ask lots of questions, but he doubted that Snape would answer him even now, and he didn't feel like wasting his breath or hearing any more insults. "Then let me go back to the Auror Department and find spellbooks about ancient spells that might work, or ask Hermione-"

"That was a one-way Portkey I used," Snape said. "To travel between the dimensions is exhausting and perilous. You will not be returning until the creature is destroyed."

"Really." Harry couldn't prevent the grinding from emerging in his voice this time. "And you couldn't have bloody _warned _me before this happened? Or at least left me time to write a note? And where am I supposed to sleep?"

Snape looked down his nose at Harry. "To answer the least important question first, in the same place I do. This cottage does not hold enough room for more than that, and we do not dare sleep outside, for fear of encountering the Horcrux's malignant effects."

"_What_?" Harry snapped, undone at the thought of sleeping in the same bed as Snape-or, more likely considering the amount of space in here, on the same pile of dirty, filthy rags. "You've got to be-"

"My owl can travel between the worlds with relative ease," Snape continued. "He is a made thing, a construct, as you may have noticed." He touched the iron talons of the owl, who still sat on his shoulder and watched Harry with what seemed an unrelenting hate. "You will communicate with your friends that way. And if I had warned you, you would have resisted. We do not have time for resistance."

"Does the Horcrux have a deadline it has to be destroyed by?" Harry asked, momentarily diverted.

"No," Snape said, looking honestly surprised for a moment. "I wish to have my peace back as soon as possible."

"Then what was that about-"

"I wish to have my peace back _as soon as possible,_" Snape said, in the loud, long tones he used when he thought he was speaking to an imbecile, which meant it was the voice Harry had always remembered him by. "Your arguments would have made it take longer than it has to."

Harry rolled his eyes.

Snape didn't appear to notice, instead nodding to a corner of the room that looked as if it was solid with Potions racks. "This way."

Harry followed, shaking his head. He was tired, he decided, and he wanted to get back to sleep. That was the only reason he didn't ask more questions, didn't demand that Snape send his owl with a letter to Hermione this instant.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because he was already beginning to realize that he wouldn't get any answers.

* * *

Pale sunlight woke Harry. He'd always had trouble sleeping with light shining on his face. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and yawned.

A clash of wings made him jump. When he looked over, Snape's badly-made owl was glaring at him from the top of a shelf. It gave Harry a few more moments to contemplate how rude he was just for existing, then turned back to stare at Snape. Harry guessed it was watching over his sleep.

_Not the kind of thing I'd choose to wake up to, _Harry thought, and levered himself out of the pallet as quietly as possible. To his surprise, the thing had turned out to be a real bed, if on the floor and made from a mattress filled with old, crackling feathers. When he was looking at the cottage and estimating the dimensions, Harry had forgotten about wizardspace.

But sleeping next to Snape was still an unpleasant experience, Harry quickly corrected himself, as he wound his way carefully around the racks and shelves and cauldrons and major, central cauldron and out into the open to piss. (He didn't want to imagine what Snape's bathroom looked like). Snape grumbled. He kicked. Once he had hissed something right into Harry's ear that had Harry waking up in a panic, grabbing his wand. And of course there was no chance of getting comfortably naked in any bed _he _was in. Harry just had to thank the fate that had led him to being so tired last evening that he'd collapsed into bed still in his robes. Otherwise, the owl probably would have brought him here without giving him time to dress.

_Wherever "here" is._

Harry took another look around by daylight. There was still nothing interesting in sight. He would have expected to see some sign of mountains or hills in the distance, but there were none. The briskly cold air around him seemed to suggest he was still in England, or at least somewhere in the north, but the lack of farms, moors, a view of the ocean, and any other distinguishing features made it impossible to tell where.

Something Snape had said last night tugged at Harry's memory.

_He couldn't use Fiendfyre because it hasn't been invented here._

_So this is a lost piece of history? Someplace where wizards didn't invent certain spells? Or maybe never lived? No, that can't be it, or we wouldn't be able to use magic at all, and the Horcrux probably couldn't exist._

Harry shuddered at what that thought implied. _I could have lived my life quite happily never knowing that Horcruxes were some of the first magic to be invented._

He set out for a walk around the lake, wondering as he went when breakfast was and if he would be able to eat it. Since he didn't have another goal, he started out for the withered black tree, which didn't look any more attractive with the sun up, either. Lightning had probably struck it sometime in the past, Harry thought idly.

Then he stepped around it, and stared.

Something living was here after all.

The creature was a black horse, cropping the grass close to the edge of the lake with a determination that hinted it didn't get to eat often. Its mane hung down its neck in knotted strands that suggested no one had been taking care of it. It scraped the grass with a hoof and then huffed, drawing its head back to stare down disapprovingly.

Harry couldn't help it; he laughed.

The horse jerked its head up, staring at him. For a moment, its tail flicked and its flanks shuddered as though it were considering running. Then it went back to grazing, watching him with one suspicious eye in the meantime.

Harry came slowly closer. The horse watched him still, but didn't attempt to run. It even let Harry step up to it and stroke its neck. It wasn't tall, about as big as a Shetland pony, but its coat was smooth and short, like the grass, instead of shaggy. It leaned against him with a small sigh, abandoning its grazing to snort unexpectedly sweet breath into his face.

"Who do you belong to?" Harry asked it quietly. The horse cocked its head towards his voice, but with no sign of understanding. "Probably not Snape. I can't blame you for avoiding him. He'd chop you up for Potions ingredients." The horse gave a little squeal, and Harry laughed again. "But you must be used to humans," he added, as the horse lifted its chin to be scratched, "with the way you're reacting to me."

The horse closed its large dark eyes and gave no opinion one way or the other.

Harry looked it over carefully. If it could provide him any evidence of where it had come from, then he would try to find the wizards, or at least the people, who owned it. They could help him learn more about the life in this place, which Snape seemed to be disinclined to chat about.

He could see no marks on the horse that would indicate anyone had used a saddle or bridle to tame it, and its coat was covered with little bristles and snarls that Harry thought people groomed out (though he had to admit his knowledge about horses was hazy). Its mane was sharp and ragged, almost weedy, as though someone had cut it at one point and then the horse had run away before it could happen again.

"I wouldn't blame you if that's what you did," Harry told the horse, who blinked its eyes at him and blew on the front of his robes as it searched for treats in his pockets. "I hated having my hair cut when Aunt Petunia did it, too."

He walked around the horse, and it craned its neck back to watch him do it. There were no marks on the flanks, either. Harry looked at its tail, but it appeared normal. So no one had cut that lately.

He came back around to the front of the horse and stroked its nose again. "Sorry," he said, when it tried to nuzzle into his hand. "I don't have any food for you."

The horse stepped back and pawed at the ground with its hoof. Harry thought it was trying to find better grass, but it looked at him expectantly, and then dropped to one knee.

Harry felt his mouth fall open. "Someone _must _have owned you, and trained you to do that," he said. He found himself looking carefully at it for signs of wings that he'd somehow missed. Maybe it had escaped from a flying horse farm, and that was why it was so far away from all signs of other wizards. But no, it didn't have wings.

The horse looked appealingly up at him. Harry blinked. He knew that animals didn't really feel human emotions-although some of the smuggled magical creatures he'd rescued during his time as an Auror came pretty bloody close-but he thought its eyes showed loneliness and yearning.

"Do you _want _to be ridden?" he asked.

The horse snorted, an enormous blast of warm air, and flicked its tail in agitation, but didn't stand up or move nearer.

"This is mad," Harry muttered, and almost turned around and went back to the cottage. Surely Snape would know if other wizards lived around here, and, if they did, whether they owned a horse that must be partially a magical creature if it communicated so well and liked humans so much.

But there he ran into the same difficulty as before: Snape had no reason to tell him things. He had only told him about Bellatrix's Horcrux and that his owl could fly between dimensions, Harry thought, because they were the minimum necessary to get the help he wanted. Other than that, who knew? He might spend weeks or months without telling Harry anything further, and insulting him when he asked.

"Could you take me back home?" Harry asked the horse, sure now that it would provide some intelligible response.

The horse bobbed its head eagerly. Harry shook his and came nearer, slinging a leg over the horse's back.

The horse rose carefully, glancing back at Harry's leg once or twice as if to make sure he was comfortable. Harry looked at the horizon and saw no sign of a human dwelling. He waited in curiosity to see where the horse would take him.

The horse stepped forwards. Harry realized another disadvantage of no bridle or reins then and reached out to grip its mane.

The mane felt stranger than ever in his hands. Harry looked more closely at it.

Weedy...

It was _made _of weed.

Harry snapped his head up. The horse was glancing back at him again, head turned fully on its neck.

Its face had changed utterly. Its dark eyes flared with green fire, and its slightly parted jaws were full of jagged teeth. Conical teeth, coming to a point, Harry saw, staring at them in frozen fascination, like the teeth of predators that swallowed their prey whole.

_Kelpie!_

Harry tried to rip his hands from the mane, and discovered they were entangled. He tried to pull his legs away from the horse's sides, and found out they wouldn't come. The kelpie stood there and watched him struggle, tilting its head to the side like a bird.

Harry didn't panic. He still had his wand, even though it was caught up in the mane, and he knew the counter to a kelpie. They could be easily tamed by conjuring up a bridle and using a Placement Charm to put it over their heads. One incantation would make the bridle appear-

_Should _have made the bridle appear. The words fell dead on dead air, and Harry remembered, too late, what Snape had said about certain spells not being invented here. Probably the wizards who had lived in their dimension, if any had, didn't have horses.

_Shit!_

The kelpie cried out, a ringing neigh that quickly turned into a full-throated scream, and bolted forwards. Harry hung on, because he had no choice, but chanted another spell that should tangle and trip up its feet-

The kelpie leaped, and if the spell had come into being at all, it would have failed. Harry struggled with his fear as the kelpie curved down and down, thinking of other spells, knowing they must be there, if only his mind would stop flailing around and recall them-

They plunged beneath the surface of the lake.

Harry was holding his breath, but the impact with the cold water still shocked him and made little air bubbles escape around the corners of his teeth. Shivering, he tried to fight free again, but his hands and legs stayed right where they were.

With unfortunate clarity, he remembered what his training had had to say about kelpies. _They like to drown their meat._

He squinted, trying to see in the murky water, and thought the kelpie's head had turned back towards him. Perhaps it was going to watch as he died.

The information might have helped if he could get a hand free, if he had a weapon.

Panic was building and surging around the edges of Harry's brain like the tide trying to force itself past a retaining wall. He was a trained Auror, but using his training depended on being able to use magic, on being able to fight back against an enemy who had captured him, on being able to _breathe_.

Distantly, like a sound heard on another planet, he thought the kelpie snorted smugly.

Harry closed his eyes, shutting out the murky water and the dim movements that might be the kelpie leaning in to take an early taste, and groped about in his mind for spells that might work here. Snape had some Potions equipment; he must have been able to conjure it-unless he'd brought it. He had spells that fastened the stones of his cottage together-unless he had brewed the mortar. He had fire-

Harry's eyes snapped open.

_Incendio!_ he thought with all his might. _Incendio!_

The water around them turned boiling. The kelpie neighed and gave a whole-body flinch, its sides squirming like a snake's. Harry lunged in the opposite direction at the same moment, and one hand ripped free of the mane.

He could raise the wand now and add the movements that made the spell more powerful. He still didn't speak, because his ears were already ringing and his sight darkening and he had no interest in finding out what a mouthful of the lake water was like. _Incendio!_ he thought, while his arm traveled more slowly than normal against the pressure of the water and any curses of frustration had to be suppressed.

This time, the jet of boiling water made his back feel as if it were being roasted, but it also came from behind, and seemed to sting the kelpie on the flanks. Harry felt it gather its muscles. He tried to tense, then froze, not sure that was the correct reaction.

Meanwhile, his brain shrieked, _Drowning! Drowning! Drowning!_, which made it hard to concentrate.

The kelpie bucked him off.

His legs came free, then his other hand. Harry raised his wand and cast the Bubble-Head Charm, hoping desperately that that was one that would work here.

Nothing happened. Harry tilted his head back, half-spinning over, not sure which way was up and which way down, just sure that the lighter part was the surface, and stretched out his arms, trying to swim.

The water pushed at him. More air forced its way out of his mouth, and Harry's lungs were protesting that he would _have _to breathe soon, lake be damned. Black clouds expanded and pulsed in front of his eyes, timed to the beating of his heart. His head spun. He wanted to vomit almost more than he wanted to breathe.

_Rise! Come on, damnit!_

Something snagged his leg, and for a panicked moment he thought it was the kelpie's teeth. Then he realized that it was long and flexible and thin, probably a weed rather than the kelpie. Anyway, it wasn't restricting his movements. He went on thrashing his way, profoundly ungraceful, towards the spot of light.

His mouth opened.

The water seemed to drown him both inside and out, subduing his mind and his body at the same moment. Harry coughed and gasped and swallowed more of the lake, fighting the pressure and the panic and the temptation to turn in a downwards direction all at once, hating this, hating that he was dying in a place far away from home like this, for the price of nothing but one of Snape's mad ideas, Snape had probably replaced Dumbledore and thought-

Then one of his hands hit something that wasn't water, pushing back too solidly, and Harry reached within himself for the courage that would give him what he needed and pushed towards what he thought was up, uncoiling.

Air met him.

Harry had never realized how blessed it was simply to breathe. He opened his mouth and flopped on the bank, spewing water into the reeds, writhing and coughing. He tried to drag himself out of the lake-he didn't want to stay in it one second longer than he needed to-but he was too weak. He stayed there, spitting and hacking, his eyes bulging and his thoughts spinning in his head.

"Potter. Undignified as always."

Harry didn't have the energy to open his eyes and glare. He spat instead, and he thought there must be blood mixed with the water by now, it was coming from so deep inside him. Of course, he hoped it wasn't, but he couldn't look yet. He would just have to slog through this and come out the other end.

_And hope that everything else doesn't._

An impatient sigh sounded from above him, and then someone crouched beside him and cast a spell Harry couldn't hear; it was nothing more than a murmur from beside his ear. Harry screamed as his lungs seemed to turn themselves inside out and more water than he had realized existed leaped from between his lips in a painful fountain. He sagged down until his face touched the ground and opened his mouth. He wanted to moan, but he didn't have the strength even for that.

"The Summoning Charm still works, thank Merlin," Snape said, in the detached voice he had used when someone asked a non-stupid question in Potions class. "Come here, Potter. I don't fancy trying to nurse you and take care of my tasks at once." Harry was swung into the air and placed over a hunched, scrawny shoulder that he suspected Snape was deliberately trying to make as uncomfortable as possible.

"You could have warned me about the fucking kelpie," Harry said, or tried to say. The words made him cough, and _that _made his ribs hurt, and his body began to heave, forcing out more water. Snape's Summoning Charm, predictably, hadn't worked completely.

Blackness was creeping back in, unwanted, uninvited, but still there. Harry still heard Snape's answer, though.

"I did warn you about it, Potter. That was Bellatrix's Horcrux."

* * *

Harry opened his eyes and tensed. He was in an unfamiliar place-he knew that from the way the mattress humped strangely beneath him, if from nothing else-and there was someone behind him, too close, too sharp. There was a scent of sweat and murky water.

He started to sit up.

An arm clamped around his shoulders, forcing him back down. Harry flung his right hand out for his wand while he reached up with his left to break the wrist of the arm holding him, if he could.

"Enough, Potter," Snape's voice said, so loud and close in his ear that Harry jerked like a startled horse.

Horses made him think of the kelpie, and thought of the kelpie led to thoughts of the lake, and the reminder and memory of how he had almost drowned. Harry took a deep breath and released Snape's wrist. "Sorry," he said. Saying the word was more difficult than spitting out the water had been, but Snape wasn't the enemy here, no matter how much easier that would have been for Harry. "What do we do now?"

There was no response from Snape for long moments, as if he had expected Harry to be worse about the apology than that.

_Or maybe he never thought there would be an apology at all, _Harry thought, and rubbed his shoulder where the gripping arm had hurt him, while mentally running through his catalogue of injuries. His throat hurt, and his chest ached, but his head was clear. He could probably fight in half a day, or less.

"We continue the plan to defeat Bellatrix." Snape's voice was neutral. Harry heard the shift and rustle of his robes as he rose to his feet, and pulled his hands in close as Snape worked his way around Harry. He'd had quite enough of Snape touching him for now, what with _this_ and the carrying over the shoulder. "I brought you here because this is where the Horcrux dwells, and where we must defeat it. I have tried to lure it into our own world. It will not come. It possesses a level of knowledge and malevolence that ordinary kelpies do not have, and which I can only assume came from the changes Bellatrix made to it when she embedded it with a piece of her soul."

Harry rubbed his eyes and looked up to see Snape standing next to his bubbling cauldron, staring into it with a grimace. His hand darted away to the side, and returned with a group of small, straight green leaves that he dropped into the potion. The grotesque owl sat on his shoulder, picking at one of its feathers.

Harry watched Snape. The scars on his throat from Nagini were plain to see in the light from the open cottage door. His skin looked a dusty yellow color now, his fingers as thin as the leaves, his nose so pointed that he could have used it like a beak to poke someone's eye out. He and that owl were a matched pair, Harry thought.

"Why did you suddenly decide to tell me this?" Harry asked, standing up and carefully working his way past Snape. Their robes brushed. That made Harry feel worse, for some reason, than sleeping beside Snape had. "You didn't want to tell me anything last night." He paused, uncertain. _Was _it still only last night?

Snape lifted his face. There were cruel lines around his mouth, but they turned into what looked like exasperated ones as he stared at Harry. Harry fought the temptation to straighten up and try to make himself look better. Why should he want to look better for _Snape? _

"I was-possessed of certain notions then that have been proven false now," Snape said. "It is better that you know."

"And you're not going to tell me what the notions are, are you?" Harry asked in resignation.

Snape continued to stare at him.

"Of course not," Harry muttered. He really wished he had the power to walk away, or at least to force Snape onto more equal terms with him.

But he thought about the way Bellatrix had tried to kill him, and the chaos she was causing in his world, and the way he had almost died because he trusted the kelpie.

And he thought about the way Snape had looked in the memories he gave Harry, and the way Harry had felt when he went back to the Shrieking Shack and found Snape's body gone, without even the chance for a heroic funeral, the one thing Harry had hoped to give him, to make up, if he could, for the shitty way his life had turned out.

"All right," Harry said, and squared his shoulders. "Where is this place?"

"A dimension where magic was not fully established as it should have been," Snape said, "because Hogwarts was destroyed before it could be raised."

Harry blinked in surprise. "Hogwarts was that crucial to the development of magic?" He remembered the stone he had found on the lakeshore. All the writing he couldn't read, and the name _Godric Gryffindor. _"That stone out there-it was a headstone."

"Correct," Snape said dryly. "Much as I object to the notion that Gryffindor was the guiding spirit of the Hogwarts Four, he was an essential part of them. I have not been able to trace the evolution of events in this dimension with complete certainty; it was too long ago. But I _have _learned that Gryffindor died too early, and there are traces of a single mighty magic haunting the lake, still. I believe it was a necromantic enchantment. One of the other Founders-the man and women who _should _have been the Founders-attempted to raise Gryffindor, perhaps before he had quite perished. Such things have been done."

Harry frowned. "Dumbledore told me there was no magic that could bring back the dead."

"And this did not." Snape stepped away from the cauldron, but kept a hand in place on the rim, beckoning him with the other. It took Harry a moment to realize that Snape wanted him to walk past the cauldron, but didn't trust him not to tip it over. Harry's face burned, and he had to think very hard of the Shrieking Shack to make it possible to just walk past Snape, and not say anything.

They stood together in the doorway of the cottage, and Snape made a single sweeping gesture with his arm that encompassed the dead plain of grass and the still black lake. Harry stared at the water. Probably he should have recognized it as the Hogwarts lake before now, but it genuinely hadn't occurred to him.

"The necromancy still holds," Snape said quietly. "Its echoes hang in the air. While a magical school was never raised here, someone, either wizards or Muggles, should have developed the area. They did not." He drew a vial from his robes, filled with dark green sludge that reminded Harry of his view under the lake water, and held it out to Harry. "Drink this, and then tell me what you see."

Harry stared at the vial, and hoped his face expressed his thoughts.

"I saved your life when you came out of the lake, Potter," Snape said, his face darkening. "Why would I do such a thing and then kill you now?"

"I saved myself, thank you," Harry snapped back. "And I don't think you'd kill me, but that potion might make me suffer a lot more than necessary. Just describe whatever it is you see when you take the potion."

"You would not believe me." Snape's voice had turned into the disagreeable drawl he used when he was assigning detention. He held out the vial with such a firm movement that he pressed it against Harry's cheek before Harry could turn his face aside.

The vial was like a shard of ice in Snape's burning fingers. Harry shuddered. The touch made him feel as if he were a mouse in a trap, he thought as he took the vial away just so that he wouldn't have to feel it anymore. Cold steel and warm wood, heated in the sun.

His thoughts made little sense. Harry uncorked the vial and downed the potion. Whatever it did to him, it would ensure that he couldn't think about things like _that _anymore.

The world thickened at once, the air freezing so that Harry gave a single panicked thrash, remembering the water and the way it had pressed on his lungs. He _knew _Snape would torture him with this potion, and he had taken it anyway. He was an idiot.

Snape's hands came down on his shoulders, steadying him.

Once again, they felt too hot. Harry tried to squirm away from them while not making the squirming too obvious. Snape only pressed down harder, and Harry's collarbone started to ache. He reminded himself he had gone through worse things in Auror training and while fighting Voldemort, and stood still. Besides, he hadn't actually stopped breathing. The air still traveled in and out of his lungs.

He looked around.

The air-the frozen air-was the same thick, dark green color as the sludge that had made it. The horizon was flattened out, and the lake didn't move. Or perhaps it moved slowly, Harry thought, squinting; he had seen one dark ripple roll in to shore like a dying sigh.

The sky seemed to peak like a circus tent, and when Harry glanced up at it, he shuddered. Smoke was trapped under it, smoke that rocked back and forth, never dissipated and never soothed.

"That is the remains of the necromantic enchantment," Snape said in his ear. "It is pure death, Potter. It destroyed all life within a hundred miles' radius. It is not as potent now, centuries after, and so the kelpie, the grass, a single tree, and some small animals in the lake can live here now. So can we. But you can imagine why Hogwarts did not rise." His fingers were burrowing into Harry's shoulders like worms. He tried to get away from them again, and once again Snape made his grip harder.

"I think this is Ravenclaw's work," Snape added in a detached tone. "She was intellectual enough that the Dark Arts would have a certain attraction for her and she could use them if they were for a 'higher purpose.' Alas, she did not have the visceral understanding of them that Slytherin did."

Harry was busy trying to breathe, so he couldn't respond. He just watched until the green began to fade from the edges of his vision, and he knew the potion was wearing off. Then he shrugged and ducked at the same moment, and finally forced Snape to let go of him.

Breathing deeply of air that now seemed more threatening, Harry turned around and faced Snape. He had no expression, but watched Harry as he might have watched an experimental potion that insisted on going wrong.

"That still doesn't explain what happened to Hogwarts," Harry said. "Or why what happened affected so much magic."

Snape nodded, and then turned and walked back to his cottage. Harry gritted his teeth and followed.

* * *

Lunch, or dinner-Harry reckoned he should count by what time it actually was here, or seemed to be, rather than by the number of meals he'd been able to consciously eat-was a soup made of what tasted like flavored grass. Harry choked it down, and didn't complain. He was going to stay as silent as he could, in hopes that Snape would grow bored enough to explain.

Snape hadn't said a word since they came back inside. He flipped through a sheaf of parchment and paused to read one that he kept turned carefully away from Harry. He tended two cauldrons and started a third, which projected a sort of thick steam that smelled relentlessly of boiling cabbage. He handed Harry ink and parchment, and Harry wrote a letter that explained as much as he could, reassuring Ron and Hermione he was all right, for now. Snape's ugly owl grabbed the note and vanished into the air with it. Harry leaned out the window, trying to see where it went, but just then Snape started talking again.

"The enchantment destroyed all of them," he said. "Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff. And with them died the impulse to build Hogwarts and centralize magical knowledge for the generations. That is the importance of Hogwarts, Potter, the centralization."

Harry turned to him and frowned. "But there must have been other magical schools. What happened here wouldn't have affected Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. Or-whatever other magical schools there are," he added lamely, because he hadn't realized until now that he knew no other names but those three.

Snape smiled. The expression was so unexpected, and so ugly, that Harry flinched, but Snape was watching the smoking cauldron, and didn't appear to notice. "Hogwarts was the grandest. It codified both knowledge and ideas. Until that time, most wizards lived in small family groups, guarded their spells jealously, and carried them to the grave if they could find no ideal heir. Magic remained fragmented, with geniuses laboring painfully to create different incantations to accomplish the same simple result someone might have discovered centuries before. The jealousy, the terror, the hatred...this was the time of wizards who would destroy ancient records and grimoires because they feared what their enemies would do with the knowledge more than they lusted after what they themselves could make of it.

"The Founders were different. But in this dimension, they died. The spells were not developed, and the barriers of family loyalty were never broken down as bringing children from the different families together did in our world. The wizarding community had no centralization."

Harry stared at him, queasy.

Snape pushed a heavy strand of hair out of his face and leaned over to stir the cauldron, briefly sending the smoke in a different direction. "I am not sure what happened to the rest of the wizards," he added casually, "but I am not curious enough to leave this area to check. Simply from the sheer number of spells that will not work here, however, I do not believe they can have developed very far. Or perhaps Muggles outpaced them so completely that they could not remain separate, and have bred their blood and their magic out into a stream of Squibs."

Snape turned his head then, and fixed his eyes on Harry. Harry shuddered. He could have sworn that Snape hadn't affected him this powerfully yesterday. Had coming close to death yet again changed him? Harry wouldn't have been surprised, because things that defied the laws of magic were always happening to him.

"As I told you," Snape said, though in a husky whisper that suggested he believed Harry to have forgotten already, "my potions have no effect on the Horcrux. They can get us close to it, but they cannot kill it. Something is coming very soon that can, however."

He paused. Harry snorted. "Is the dramatic silence supposed to impress me?"

A flush like the beginning of sunset worked its way up along Snape's cheeks, and then faded again. He shook his head. "Only you, Potter, would decide that I am to be treated with such disdain when I am the only one who can return you to our own world," he murmured.

Harry didn't let his fear show on his face. Or, at least, he thought he didn't. It was always hard to tell how well he was controlling his emotions. He waited until he thought he wouldn't shout, then said, "So tell me about this thing that can."

"By itself, it will do nothing to the Horcrux," said Snape. "But harnessed by wizards who know how to use it, it will. It is the change of seasons. Beltane. The ancient first day of summer," he translated, when Harry sat there looking at him blankly. "The first of May. Wizards celebrated it in rituals that were ancient at the founding of Hogwarts. Those rites should still work here, if we conduct them in the right way, but they cannot be celebrated alone. That is one of the reasons I summoned you."

Harry shook his head. "But how can-I mean, I'm assuming these are rites of life and joy and all that rot, since you talked about it being the first day of summer."

Snape seemed to sink back into shadow, though he hadn't moved a muscle. "Correct." He studied Harry and said nothing else, even though Harry waited a bit so he could take the opportunity.

Harry sighed. "Then how are we going to do a ritual like that in a place like _this_?" He gestured out the door of the cottage, and trusted Snape to understand that he was referring to the death spell Ravenclaw had apparently cast.

Snape smiled again. Harry was better-prepared for it this time, and only shivered at the way it gave Snape's eyes the look of a striking hawk. "My potions will help us there, too," he said. "And the season itself is favorable to us, friendly. Despite the power of this death spell, it cannot match the power of the sun and the earth. But it still must be done with fidelity to _every _small part of the ritual, no matter how unnecessary it might seem." He gave Harry a dubious glance. "I would have summoned someone I could trust to be more-disciplined, but your power gives us too great a magical advantage to be relinquished. We will perform the Beltane rite, it will boost our power, and the magic itself will let us kill the Horcrux. And destroy Bellatrix," he added, almost as an afterthought, "who possesses the means of entering this dimension, and will surely come when she feels her Horcrux threatened."

"If she shows up the minute we threaten it-" Harry said. He was wondering what Bellatrix could do in a dimension with so much death magic around. It wouldn't surprise him at this point to hear that she had the means of drawing on it and making her spells more powerful rather than weaker.

Snape shook his head. "I have means of preventing that."

"What means?" Harry looked at him.

Snape was silent.

Harry shut his eyes. He wanted to snap something about how Snape should really trust him if he wanted his help, but what good would that do? Snape would probably make a note in his own mind about how Harry was "hysterical" and stupid and deserved to be treated even more like a child than Snape had treated him so far. And if Harry ranted and raged, Snape would withdraw, and Harry wouldn't find out the details he needed to know, such as what kind of ritual this was and whether they would need to do anything Dark or immoral for it.

Besides, he had another recourse. He could ask Hermione for information once he found out more than basic details. Even nothing more than he had learned so far might be a help.

"Fine," he said, and opened his eyes again. "Let's get started, then."

He had the satisfaction of seeing a fleeting look of surprise on Snape's face before he stood and led the way over to the cauldrons.

* * *

Harry grimaced and stood, pressing both hands to the middle of his back. He had been stooped over, collecting Potions ingredients, for so long that it felt as if he had forgotten how to stand. He rotated his fingers, and something snapped and popped back into place. He grunted and staggered.

"One would think that you are the wizard in his forties, and not I."

Harry started a little when Snape spoke, but he wouldn't give him the dignity of looking up and responding. He just snatched the basket of clipped grass, leaves from a variety of crawling little vines that looked exactly like each other, and tiny flower petals from the pathetic garden Snape had managed to grow, and walked towards the house again. Snape trailed after him, holding his own, much larger basket.

The best thing, Harry had found, was to ignore Snape until he said something that pertained to the potions, the ritual, or the defeat of the kelpie and Bellatrix. Then Harry would listen and ask questions, stopping the moment Snape seemed more interested in insulting him than contributing. And he would try to find a piece of the parchment Snape lent him and write down the things he remembered from the conversation to send to Hermione.

So far, the ugly owl had carried three notes back and forth. Hermione had responded with large letters full of information, speculation, and guesses, as well as news about Bellatrix's latest attacks. Harry had run his fingers over the ink and wished she was here, or that Ron was here, so badly that his mouth felt flooded with bitterness.

What bothered Harry more than almost anything else was boredom. He never did anything but eat, sleep, gather ingredients, occasionally talk with Snape, and think. He looked forwards to the arrival of the letters with an eagerness that only his days on Privet Drive could compare to.

And here was the owl with another. Harry set the basket down inside the cottage door-Snape was particular about that-and reached out an eager hand. The owl spat the letter into his palm as if glad to be done with it, and then fluttered over and settled on Snape's shoulder. Snape rubbed the twisted feathers with a finger, making no attempt to brush past Harry into the cottage as he usually did.

Harry ignored him as he opened the envelope. Hermione had promised to send him ideas about Beltane rituals in this letter, since Snape still hadn't explained it and she had been unexpectedly silent about the subject so far.

_Dear Harry: _

_I'm sorry I didn't tell you this before, but I couldn't really figure out _how _to tell you. _(Harry narrowed his eyes. The parchment was ripped, as though Hermione had been upset and pressed down hard with the quill). _Today I realized time was passing, and the longer you went without knowing this, the worse it would probably be. So I'll have to say it._

_The Beltane rituals are usually demonstrations of fertility and growth. They require only lust or passion, but usually they were done by wizards and witches in love._

Harry jerked his head up in shock and stared at Snape. Snape didn't move a muscle, didn't act as though he had guessed what information Hermione's letter held. He stroked his owl and met Harry's gaze calmly.

Then Harry's habits of trying to be calm and think things through in the last few days came to his rescue. Hermione had said the rituals were _usually _like that. She hadn't said every one of them was. And there was no way that Snape would try a usual ritual, because he wasn't stupid enough to think Harry lusted after him, and he felt nothing but bottomless hatred and scorn for Harry. So _that _was all right, then.

Snape's eyes narrowed, as if the way Harry relaxed had dismayed him. Harry turned his back and continued reading the letter.

_We all know that you couldn't perform such a ritual successfully with Snape. So he must have something else in mind._

Harry snorted softly at himself. _You wouldn't have had to jump like a scalded cat at all if you'd just read on._

_I don't like not knowing what it is. Do you think you could persuade him to write to me, if he won't talk about it to you? I think he's being petty and childish, but saving the world from Bellatrix, and Dark wizards in general who have Horcruxes, is more important than old grudges._

Harry sighed. It was the exact same reasoning he had used to himself. Yes, he wished his friends were here with all his might, for all the good that would do.

_She's been quiet for the last few days. Ron and I have told Ginny and Charlie where you are, but for the rest, we've had to make up stories we thought they would believe about you being out of the country on a case. They needed to know Bellatrix hadn't got you, but they all think Snape is dead._

_Love,_

_Hermione._

Harry turned the letter over to make sure nothing was written on the back, then faced the cottage again. He would write his reply to Hermione after lunch. He was already organizing his thoughts, and the way he would have to attack Snape to try and get him to act like a mature adult.

Snape didn't move, and Harry realized after a minute that he was stranded outside. He sighed and looked up. "Do we have to do this now?" he asked.

"Did she tell you?" Snape's voice was deeper than usual, but for once, held no trace of a sneer.

Harry studied him. His arms were folded tightly enough that it looked uncomfortable for his shoulders, and his eyes had narrowed as though a strong wind were blowing directly into them.

"About the Beltane rituals?" Harry asked. "Yes, she did. But she knew that you must have a rare one ready to practice, because we wouldn't be able to do one of the ones that depends on affection. I knew that, too," he added. "Of course."

Snape was silent after that, until he abruptly dropped his arms and turned to face the interior of the cottage. Harry waited, then shrugged and followed him. He would just have to put up with this, that was obvious, until he could persuade Snape to write to Hermione.

_I was a git to him when I was a kid, yeah, but he's never stopped being one._

"Sit down."

Harry paused, reaching for his wand, when he heard that tone in Snape's voice. Then his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the walls, and he realized Snape was sitting down on a small chair Harry had never seen before, probably because he'd cleared off the supplies and ingredients that usually crowded it. Snape sat on it stiffly and looked up at him.

"Why?" Harry asked. He pinched his lips together a moment later, annoyed at himself for giving Snape even that slender ground for complaint, and sat down on the floor in his usual place. He wouldn't strain his neck to look Snape in the eye, so if Snape wanted to sit on the chair, he could just fucking put up with it.

"I have considered the possibility of using a potion to...create artificial emotions for the ritual," Snape began. "But that would, at the very least, mean that the rite would not be as strong as it could be if we had genuine affection between us. And perhaps the ancient powers of Beltane would not be fooled at all. It is best not to try it."

Harry did lift his head this time, though he didn't tilt it at an uncomfortable angle. "What's your backup plan?"

Snape tried to quell him with a cold stare, but Harry was better at noticing things now, and he had seen the brief flicker in Snape's eyes.

He scrambled to his feet, and this time he _did _grab his wand. "You didn't have one, did you?" he demanded.

Snape stood slowly, haughtily, in the way that Harry knew used to most intimidate Neville. But he wasn't Neville, and he wasn't a student anymore, and Snape wasn't a professor.

"Why choose a Beltane ritual at all, if you knew that we couldn't use it?" Harry asked. "Did you somehow think we'd fall in love between now and then?" He snorted. "And you think _I'm _an idiot?"

"Be still, Potter." Snape's voice was hoarse, his eyes dark with the most passion that Harry had seen from him since coming to this most dimension. "I chose Beltane because we are so limited in our choice of weapons to stop the Horcrux and Bellatrix's predations, and this is the most powerful we are ever likely to have-unless we wish to wait for another of the great holidays, which would leave Bellatrix longer to trouble the world. And the next holiday, Midsummer, is also traditionally a time of fertility and a holiday of the passions. Do you wish to do this?"

Harry shook his head. "But I still want to hear what your plan is," he added, maliciously waiting for the moment he thought Snape was about to relax.

"There are indeed other rituals that one can use," Snape said. "And one of them-one only-can be as powerful as a rite between two people linked by love and lust. I chose you because you are accustomed to sacrifice for the greater good. Of all the people I knew, I thought you would be the one who would do this with the least complaint."

Harry had expected to be offended if he ever heard those words, "the greater good," again. Instead, he found himself relaxing, his shoulders slumping and all his resistance draining out of his body at once. He actually flopped down into his place again and laughed aloud. Then the sight of Snape's furrowed brow and confused half-sneer struck him as so funny that he laughed again.

"You could have said so, you know," he told Snape, stretching his arms luxuriously above his head. "I couldn't understand what you _really _wanted from me. I was coming up with all sorts of stupid guesses, and you've worried Hermione for no reason. But this-this, I understand."

"_I _do not understand," Snape said, and he was past his confusion and already turning savage again, if the tone of his voice was any indication. Probably all the more savage because Harry had seen his confusion, Harry thought tolerantly.

"I know," Harry said. "But this has been _weird, _you know? Yeah, I know you want to get rid of Bellatrix and the Horcrux so you can have this dimension to yourself again, but there are still plenty of people you could have chosen instead of me, people who would have served you better. I reckon part of me was waiting for another horrible surprise like the one Dumbledore sprang on me when he told me I had to die to get rid of the Horcrux." He shook his head and laughed again, because the relief springing up in him demanded that outlet. "But this-this I can handle."

Snape said nothing at all. Slowly, he sank back into his chair again. The owl, which had circled up to the roof of the cottage, returned, with a flutter, to his shoulder. Harry smiled at it, too. Unsurprisingly, it tightened its talons on Snape's shoulder and gave Harry a warning hoot.

That seemed to stir Snape from his stupor. He jerked his head down in a nod.

"I could have called on others who would serve me better," he said. "You are right. Draco Malfoy would have been much better at Potions than you are. For that matter, your friend Granger would have understood the magical theory better."

"Yeah, I know," Harry said. It was all so familiar that he grinned again. Snape putting him down was one of the ways of the world. And now that Harry didn't have to pretend that he didn't hear the insults, he could practically joke back. "But neither of them might have been prepared to have sex for the sake of the world, and you couldn't risk getting them here and _then _finding that out."

Snape's fingers curled into the arms of the chair. He looked angrier than ever now that Harry was happy, but that was the way of the world, too, and Harry wasn't inclined to question it.

"We need not have sex, Potter," Snape said, in a voice like the grinding of gears. "Not in the way you are thinking of."

Harry rolled his eyes. "So it's in a way I'm not thinking of. But it still corresponds to one of the ideas about Beltane that Hermione gave me, doesn't it? A holiday of fertility, she said."

Snape made an abrupt movement with his right hand cupped and curved away from his body, then stopped. Harry had no idea what it might have been or meant, and was therefore determined not to worry about it. He kept his gaze fixed calmly on Snape's face instead, and waited.

"I had the impression that dying for the sake of everyone else would be difficult for you," Snape said suddenly, almost accusingly.

_Probably because he thinks it should have been easy, _Harry thought, rolling his eyes. _What else was I for but a good little lamb to be led to the altar? _"It was," Harry answered. "Marching through the Forest on the way there was the hardest thing I've ever done."

Snape seemed to wait for more, his eyes fastened on Harry's face.

Harry stared blandly back. There was no way that he was going to tell Snape about the shades of the dead that the Resurrection Stone had shown him. That was his private gift, or his private delusion, as Hermione would probably have called it.

"Then this sacrifice will not be as great as that one was," Snape said, turning his head away. He spoke as if arguing with himself. Harry suspected that, if anyone was his partner in that argument, it was Dumbledore.

"No," Harry said, just to add his opinion to the conversation. "Now, tell me about this ritual that you want to use. Or write to Hermione if you don't want to talk to me. She suggested that."

More endless moments of silence before Snape answered, head still turned to the side. It was odd, Harry thought. He would have assumed that Snape would become more brisk and business-like now that Harry had agreed, but he was all stuff and reluctant.

_Maybe he was really looking forwards to tormenting me, and now that I agreed willingly, he doesn't get to._

"Have you really discussed ways to handle me like a reluctant child? You assumed I would never tell you?"

"Yes, we did," Harry said, because there was no safe way to answer that question. "It's been several days where you've told me as little as you could get away with. I know that time's advancing towards Beltane, and given how little progress we've made so far..." He left the sentence dangling. Snape was certainly smart enough to work out the conclusion.

Snape murmured something that Harry couldn't hear, and thought he might not have been able to understand even if he could, given what sounded like the jagged edges of another language. Then he turned around and spoke with his eyes shaded and his expression locked into blankness.

"There are Beltane rituals that were meant for use between two people who needed to act together for the good of their country or community-people who occupied politically important positions-but had no passion to tie them together in the manner of the peasants."

Harry kept his snort inside. _Snape probably likes it that we aren't using the common ritual. Hasn't he always thought of himself as one of life's elite?_

"One of those rituals involves many of the potions I have brewing now." Snape touched the side of the cauldron nearest him in a stroking gesture, the way one might soothe a cat. The owl shifted on his shoulder, feathers standing up straight, and Harry wondered if it was jealous. "The pair would enter a clearing and face one another. They would consume the potions, each time speaking a ritual phrase. Their-perceptions would alter, and so would time and space in a small, immediate area." If Snape noticed the way that Harry's eyebrows rose, he didn't comment on it. "History outside the clearing would continue as normal, but inside the clearing, it would bend. It would be as if this pair had come together in the way that the normal rituals demanded, without having to sully themselves with one another."

"Hm," Harry said, because he didn't think Snape would appreciate hearing that he thought some ancient wizards were absolutely nutters. "And what are we going to use this ritual to do? Get Beltane's attention or something? Or will it help us to defeat the Horcrux?"

Snape nodded. "You are less stupid than I thought you were," he said, overwhelming Harry with the compliment. "Yes. The perceptions of time and space bending will become the reality if we use slightly stronger potions. The original celebrants had no reason to use them, as they were not interested in the changing of reality itself, only their memories. But these potions will move us into the underwater domain of the Horcrux without the necessity of passing through its defenses, and they will give us the ability to survive there. For a short time," he added warningly, as if Harry had asked about holding a ball underwater. "They will be safer than gillyweed or the other alternatives we could use, which in any case are hard enough to obtain here that I would rather use them as ingredients than in and of themselves."

Harry nodded shortly. "And what about when Bellatrix senses the danger and comes in? Do you think that'll be before or after we're out of the water?"

"Oh, almost certainly before," Snape said calmly. "And that makes the other potions necessary." This time, he looked towards the far side of the cottage above their pallet, and his eyes had a longing look. Harry could only surmise that he was thinking of the time when Bellatrix and the Horcrux-and Harry-would be gone and he could have his peace to brew back. "Timing is everything in this plan," he whispered. Then his gaze came back to Harry, and his lip curled. "_Try _not to mess it up, Potter."

Harry just nodded and reached for his basket of ingredients, bringing it inside and distributing the plants where Snape told him to.

* * *

_I don't know, mate, _Ron's letter said. It was splashed with ink, and Harry wondered for a moment if he'd been worried when he wrote it.

Then he had to smile. It was so hard to tell the difference between Ron's normal writing and his worried writing that it was best to give up the attempt and just read around the ink.

_I don't know, mate. How do you know that Snape is telling the truth? He lied to us all along, and just because they were good lies some of the time doesn't mean they always will be. Now that Dumbledore's dead, what reason does he have to protect you? He could have lured you there just to kill you in an amusing way. Amusing to him, I mean, not to me. _

Harry folded the letter thoughtfully. It was true. Snape had shared his memories with Harry, but those memories had only mattered up to the time that Dumbledore died. Snape had objected to Harry being raised as a sacrifice, not to killing him himself.

And had he really objected? Harry had seen the memories, but that wasn't the same as knowing every thought in Snape's head.

Then Harry shrugged. He didn't think he could trust Snape to do much, but acting to get something he wanted was right at the top of the list. He wanted his peace back. He wanted a dimension that only he owned or lived in; Harry had no doubt he was that greedy. And he wanted the ritual to go right so he wouldn't have to actually have sex with Harry and Harry could leave.

Within those limits-and granted that Harry always kept his wand out and made sure that he went to sleep after Snape did and woke earlier-Harry thought he was safe.

He looked around for parchment so that he could start writing a response to Ron, but the ugly owl had flown outside apparently to bring Snape, because he ducked into the cottage and strode imperiously up to Harry.

"We must practice, Potter."

"The ritual responses?" Harry asked, standing up, because he couldn't imagine that Snape wanted to practice drinking the potions, and as for Snape letting him help in the brewing, that was out of the question. He had asked once, and Snape had given him a _look_. Then freezing silence had prevailed in the cottage for the rest of the evening.

"What else?" Snape crooked a finger and stepped out the door again, and Harry followed him, rolling his eyes. It was beneath Snape's dignity to say _Come with me, _that much was certain.

On the other hand, would Harry want him to? He would only sound like he was summoning a dog.

Harry studied Snape with curiosity he hoped was concealed as Snape fussed about, ordering Harry to stand at a certain distance from him and then using a dragon's claw to draw a line in the grass around them. Snape could move swiftly even bent over and with his stringy hair swinging into his face, his lips bent into a fierce grimace of concentration.

If he did one thing, Harry criticized him in his mind. If he did another, Harry distrusted him. There was really no way Snape could win with him.

_Any more than I can win with him._

The truth of that thought made Harry think some more, and he missed the first time Snape spoke to him. He didn't miss the sneer or the lifted wand, though. Flinching instinctively, he nearly threw a hex before he remembered how many spells didn't work here. Harry took a deep breath and flicked his hair irritably out of his eyes.

"Have you gone deaf, Potter, or simply stupid?" Snape demanded. "You know why we are here, and yet you still stare at the sky and the water as if they had messages for you!"

"I wish they had messages about how to get along with you," Harry muttered.

"_Pardon_?"

Oh, that was the Potions professor and Head of Slytherin House all over, in that air-drawing sound. Harry shook his head. "Never mind," he said. "Are we going to be reading the responses, or will you tell me what they are?"

"Repeat them after me," Snape said, "changing the information as necessary. The responses are very similar to each other. What is important is the _intention_, not the word."

Harry narrowed his eyes. _Somehow, he failed to mention this before, _he thought. "Then why perform it at all? If the magic won't be fooled or raised by a lust potion, then why will it be fooled or raised by a conscious intention to save the world?"

Snape gave him a condescending look Harry would bet he had perfected by the time he was two years old-or at least nine, if the memory Harry had seen of him with his mum and Aunt Petunia was any indication. "I have explained the similarity of the ancient ritual to our present intentions, and you would understand if you _attempted _to understand, Potter. This ritual was meant to bind two individuals who had to save or serve a community but did not like each other-"

"I _know _that-"

"I find you infinitely more attractive when you are not confessing your ignorance to all and sundry," Snape said, and then went on as if he didn't notice the way Harry stood still after his words. "Our desire to destroy the Horcrux and save others from Bellatrix is similar enough to a desire to save the community that we can get away with this."

_I was thinking I couldn't win with him, _Harry thought. _But the closest he's ever come to treating me decently is during these last few days, when I kept silent and didn't blurt out every thought in my head. He probably wondered what was going on, but he couldn't find a way to latch onto anything in my behavior or words, so he kept silent, too._

It was an annoying tactic, because it meant that nearly everything Harry said sounded stupid to Snape. But it was a tactic Harry had figured out on his own, without anyone explaining it to him. And it _worked_. That was reason enough to go on doing it.

Besides, he understood now. So he just gave Snape a terse nod and moved a step back, waiting, watching his mouth to make sure he wouldn't let words escape.

Snape waited too, for a few minutes, as if he expected Harry to change his mind and spout off some more. Then, although a frown always lurked around the corners of his mouth, he began to recite.

"I will guard this land and this earth from intrusion, from harm. I will fight its enemies. With the weight of my forty-two years I promise this."

_What's the difference between land and earth? _Harry wondered, but he instantly repeated the first two lines before he could forget them, changing the last line only to, "With the weight of my twenty-two years I promise this."

Snape stared some more, probably looking for flaws. Harry remained stubbornly, unstupidly silent, and Snape finally snorted and went on. Harry made a mental note to ask him if the pause was part of the ritual later.

"I bind myself now to someone with the power to support me, to save me, to fight beside me, to awe me. As the _dominus_ of this land, I will consider my relations with my companion as I consider my relations to the land."

_I bet those words burn his mouth worse than they burn mine, _Harry thought smugly, and repeated them until he got past the first sentence. "As the _dom_-"

"You cannot say that, Potter," Snape interrupted, predictably. "You are not the _dominus _of anything. And Merlin help us if you were," he added, not at all quietly.

Harry waited until he was sure Snape wouldn't say anything else, then held his eye and murmured, "I reckon you kept that information from me and how I would have to change the response on purpose. You just _love _correcting me, don't you?"

Real, genuine surprise was an emotion Harry didn't think he'd ever seen in Snape's eyes, but he was familiar enough with it from his battles with Voldemort and then his struggles with the Aurors, some of whom wanted him to be perfect and others of whom wanted an excuse to turn against him. Harry savored it in the scant second before Snape tucked it under a mask and hissed at him, "This is not a game, Potter."

"I know that," Harry said. "Do you, with the way you're keeping information to yourself that you already know I won't know?"

Another frown, though this time with no surprise. Harry stood and let Snape work out-whatever he needed to work out-in his mind. Maybe this was the way to get him past the game-playing. Let him see that it took up time and made him look, and hopefully feel, more like a child than Harry ever could in the same situation.

Finally, Snape gave his head an irritated little jerk and said, "The _dominus, _as the name is used in this ritual, means a lord and protector. Someone who would give his life for the land, who suffers when it does and rejoices when it does." In the back of his eyes was a black spark. "In the old days, the _dominus _was expected to die in the autumn, or sometimes in the spring, echoing the life of the land, and a new one was chosen."

"Doubly glad I'm not in that position, then," Harry said cheerfully. "What am I, if you're the _dominus_?"

Another sharp stare from Snape, another refusal on Harry's part to either drop his eyes or say something, and finally Snape sniffed and said, "The _equitum._ The translation is less effective in this case, but as used in the ritual, it means second-in-command, someone who stands at the _dominus's _hand and is ready to enforce his will."

"Are the words of the ritual response still the same, other than that?" Harry asked.

Snape shook his head. "The first sentence is. The second sentence requires you to say that, as the _equitum_, you will follow the _dominus _in the defense of the land and carry out his orders."

Harry smiled slightly. Snape was watching him the way he would probably watch a cauldron ready to explode. "I can do that," he said. "As long as there's nothing in there about never questioning the orders."

He saw it, he _knew _he saw it, before Snape practically barked at him about not treating this like a game and the ritual needing seriousness, and the knowledge burned and glowed in the back of Harry's mind as they returned to repeating the responses.

Snape had worn something like a smile.

* * *

_What about poisons in the bed? _

Harry snorted, and tried to muffle the sound in the grassy stew he was eating when Snape looked up. Ron's latest letter, which was trying to suggest all the subtle ways Snape might kill him that Harry hadn't thought of, was hilarious, but not in a way Snape would appreciate.

"One of your friends has written something amusing?" No expression in Snape's eyes or voice or face, and so Harry told himself that he was free to imagine what he liked. Snape might be disapproving, indifferent, bored, or angry. Harry chose to take it as halfway interested, because otherwise he wouldn't have asked the question, and answered accordingly.

"He's convinced you're still trying to kill me," Harry said. "Or at least that you must have wanted me here for a different reason than destroying the Horcrux."

Snape grunted and turned back to his food. Harry looked at the letter and shook his head. Ron suggested other ingenious methods that Snape might use to destroy Harry, but none of them were as funny as that one.

_Now I only need to decide whether to tell him that we sleep in the same bed._

Harry laid the letter aside and forgot about it for a short time while he was outside in the garden, moving flowers about, weeding, and collecting more snippets of leaves that Snape had told him to gather. The work itself was almost soothing; it reminded him of the more bearable parts of being at the Dursleys'. He couldn't say that he'd been _happy_ there, anymore than he was here without his friends and having to deal constantly with Snape, but he could endure.

_And that's what's more important than anything, isn't it? _Harry asked himself, as he carried his basket back to the house. _Being able to endure and put up with things. You can't expect to be happy all the time. I'm sure Snape would rather have chosen someone else for this ritual, but I'm what choice he had, and so he puts up with me._

That led to speculations, or at least thoughts, about what kind of person Snape would have preferred to do the Beltane ritual with. Harry shuddered and shook his head as he opened the door. Best not to go there, or he would die of disgust.

_Or else be left to die of sexual frustration, _he thought in some wryness as he went over to deposit the basket next to the others in one corner of the room, from which Snape seemed to draw all his Potions ingredients. Harry still didn't understand half the potions that Snape had simmering at any one time, but at least the layout of the house was no longer a maze to him.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Harry looked up, startled. Snape's voice was so cold that his first thought was that he had managed to screw up the ingredient-gathering.

But Snape was holding a piece of parchment in his hand that he extended towards Harry with a certain rigid shake.

Harry recognized Ron's letter, and Snape's thumb was resting right below the paragraph in which Ron asked about poisons. He exhaled and shook his head, annoyed about the cause but relieved that he wouldn't have to deal with an outburst that had a worse cause. "It's just Ron being stupid. He's only listened to your reasoning second-hand, after all, and that isn't enough for him to be really convinced by it. So he comes up with these plans for you to off me."

Snape slammed the letter into the table. "And you have not told him why so many of these plans are impossible? That we share the same bed, the same food, the same _breathing _space?" Snape sounded as if that last was the most disgusting.

"I didn't know how much you would want me to tell him," Harry said. "After all, it's sort of humiliating for us to share the same bed, isn't it?"

Snape's face went blank. "Explain what you mean," he said.

Harry rolled his eyes, and didn't care if Snape saw. There were some things that were worth making a fuss over, and others that weren't. Snape's outrage had lost its power to affect Harry on the minor things. "I just meant that you wouldn't sleep in the same bed with me if you had any choice," he said. "It's about space and practicality instead, because a larger bed would mean less room to brew your potions. I _understand_ that. I hadn't mentioned it to Ron because I thought that you might object. That's all."

More staring. Harry stared back, mildly irritated now. Was Snape trying Legilimency? Harry thought he would feel it this time, now that he knew it existed, but maybe not, since he was such pants at Occlumency.

Regardless, Snape wasn't going to find anything but the truth, because that was what Harry had spoken.

Snape turned away with a hasty motion of his shoulder that the very generous would call a shrug. "You may tell him what you please," he snapped. "It is not as if his interference has the power to halt what will happen here."

_And that's exactly the sort of ominous sentence that would convince him you're up to no good, _Harry thought, with a private roll of his eyes, but he wasn't going to include it in the letter and so Ron didn't ever have to know about it. "Thanks," he said to Snape's back.

Snape simply walked away. Harry went to find parchment and ink to write another letter.

And that after, he would have to find the ugly owl. The thing stayed close to Snape most of the time, but seemed to know when Harry wanted it and would disappear promptly five minutes before, determined not to oblige.

_Rather like its master in that way, _Harry thought, and picked up the quill.

* * *

Harry's eyes opened. He didn't know what had awakened him, but he knew something was wrong.

He lay still and kept his breathing the same, one of the first tricks he had learned in the Aurors. The danger was close, which meant that whoever had come hunting him could probably see him.

He couldn't see much, given the dim moonlight that entered through the cottage's single window, but he could use the tricky shadows and his memory of what the room had looked like before Snape had lowered the fire to reconstruct what it should look like now. A table to the left, covered with cauldrons; the person could probably see that. He wouldn't be able to see all the little vials, but Harry didn't think he could remember them, either. They would be an obstacle for him without being a hindrance against the attacker. The cottage door was shut-

No, Harry realized as his eyes adjusted. It was open a crack, which was still further than it should be, given how firmly Snape latched the door at night. And that meant the stranger was probably there, not at the window, looking in, as Harry had envisioned.

Harry nudged one leg backwards, across the scant inch of space that separated their bodies, and hit Snape in the gut. Snape awoke silently, thank Merlin, though he reached out and clutched Harry's elbow with a grip that made Harry glad he had a high pain threshold.

"Someone here," Harry breathed, so quietly that he hoped Snape paid attention to everything his ears reported. "At the door. Standing behind it, I think. No shadow. Go in low. Follow my lead."

He pulled away from Snape's grip by main force and began to squirm across the floor on his stomach. He didn't trust himself not to bump into something if he tried to walk. His wand was in his hand as he went, and he was going through the few spells that would work in this dimension, trying to decide which ones would be best for this situation.

There weren't many.

Grimacing, Harry lifted his hand and went through the motions for a nonverbal Summoning Charm focused on the attacker's wand.

The air in front of and beside him trembled, and then there was a hiss from Snape at the same moment as a cry from behind the door. Harry cursed as two wands hit his hand. He had Summoned Snape's, too, and he could only assume it was because he wasn't actually _that _good at nonverbal magic.

Harry spun, grabbed what he hoped beyond hope was Snape's wand, and threw it back towards him. Then he was up on his knees, preventing the second wand from flying back to its owner's hand by the sheer weight of his body alone, and casting _Incendio _in front of him to hopefully deal with the problem.

"Little baby Potter, did you think you could defeat me with that?" said the shadow, and moved aside.

_Bellatrix. Of course it's Bellatrix. _Harry flung himself flat to the floor, just in case she could manage a wandless attack-who knew what was possible when you had Horcruxes?-and tried to figure out some way to move that wouldn't bring all of Snape's cauldrons toppling down. He wanted to cast _Lumos_, but that would tell Bellatrix directly where he was, so he flattened even more and inched forwards, keeping an eye on her shadow by the moonlight.

_Where the fuck is Snape?_

A touch in the middle of his back nearly made him yelp aloud, but he'd been watching the shadow carefully and knew there was no way it could have got behind him. He tilted his head in acknowledgment of Snape's presence and waited, frowning when he realized that Bellatrix had made no attempt to move. What was she doing, glaring evilly at them from behind the door and hoping they'd drop dead?

Snape's hand attracted his attention again. Two of his fingers were splayed out, pointing left. A moment later, he tapped Harry's back. Then the two fingers pointed right, and the hand moved away to tap Snape's chest with a solid-sounding thump.

Harry nodded his understanding, though he wondered how in the world he would move to the left without upsetting things. He was right next to one of the fragile tables that contained several vials full of sparkling red powder, no doubt rare and expensive Potions ingredients that Snape would be unable to replace if he destroyed them.

There were the subtle sounds of Snape moving away, and in the silence that followed, Harry heard a thin, eerie noise that made the skin of his neck shudder before he recognized it. Bellatrix was whistling.

Not a tune, Harry told himself swiftly as he listened. More like a call. A summons.

And then there was the noise of hooves on the ground, and a low, eager whicker.

Harry moved without thought. If the Horcrux came into the hut, they were lost; it was big enough to smash the potions and the cauldrons down to nothing, and perhaps intelligent enough to recognize their weapons and what they planned. He stood up, kicked Bellatrix's wand under the nearest table, and ran out to meet the kelpie.

His sudden exit took Bellatrix by surprise, if the gasp he heard was any indication, but not the kelpie. It had probably smelled him coming. It reared up in front of him with a joyous neigh, reed-like mane outlining its head in black against the moon, and then dropped, trying to bring its hooves and its teeth down on him all at once.

Harry darted forwards, remembering the spell he had seen Snape use to slice up some of the flowers and leaves Harry had gathered from the garden, and shouted, "_Diffindo!_"

The kelpie screamed as a thin slice opened in its belly, and stopped for a moment, neck craning, as if the pain were great enough to require it to deal with the wound at once. Harry, who could scarcely believe that he'd run under the thing and survived, reversed himself at the tail and shouted, "_Diffindo!_" again. The slices created were so small that it would take a lot of them to hurt the kelpie significantly.

This time, he caught it on the rump, and he could make out the small drops of blood that beaded beneath the tail. The kelpie screamed again, but didn't waste time staring, or trying to stare, at the injury. Instead, it whirled and came straight for him, hooves drumming on the ground like hollow beats on an empty skin, eyes flaring brilliant green in the shadows.

_Green like mine, _Harry thought crazily, and wished like hell he had his broom.

He didn't know any spell that would cause enough pain to slow the kelpie down in mid-stride, so he had to lead it in a widening circle, hoping it would tire before he did, knowing that wasn't likely, and wondering whether Bellatrix had retrieved her wand.

And where Snape was.

The kelpie squealed, and Harry glanced over his shoulder despite the instincts that shouted at him to keep running. It didn't sound like a noise of pain, that was the frightening thing. It sounded like a noise that meant bad news for him.

Bellatrix was on the kelpie's back, riding as if born to it, her crazy hair streaming behind her in imitation of the beast's mane. She gestured, and Harry caught a glimpse of her wand just before the world around him exploded in a brilliant white concussion.

_Shite, _he thought, as he flipped through the air, caught in a moment of strange, agonizing calm with all the breath pressed out of his lungs. _She knows more spells that work here than I do._

He hit the ground, and the air came rushing back, and his lungs groaned and his muscles ached, and only training made him flail back to his feet and keep running. Instinct at this point wanted to lie down in a quivering heap and wait for it to end.

He gritted his teeth and ran still, away from the cottage and towards the lake, trying to spare the potions and give Snape time to do something.

_If he will. If he hasn't just abandoned me the way Ron would say he has._

Harry brushed sweat out of his eyes, and only then became aware of the monstrous ache in his wrist. He grimaced. _Just what I need, a fracture. _

Teeth snapped a few inches from his spine.

Harry cast _Incendio _behind him again, on the theory that a fire spell might do damage to a water creature if not to Bellatrix, but there was no sound of pain. He could hear the hooves now, though, and they were close enough to catch him.

It hurt like blazes, but he forced himself to drop to his knees and stretch an arm out along the ground. He had thought to trip the kelpie, but, probably because it had a rider who could see better than it could, it neighed like a drowning gryphon, and swerved to avoid him by the hoofbeats. That won Harry a few precious seconds, but he slipped getting up, and the kelpie was already almost on top of him again.

Harry rolled over, determined to face his death. The kelpie was huge above him, with Bellatrix making it taller, all sharp edges and sunless shadows that shimmered vaguely in the moonlight.

"_Diffindo! Diffindo! Diffindo!_" The word seemed to echo from three directions, spoken impossibly fast, though Harry knew it was only one voice.

Two screams, followed by a third. At least one had come from each enemy's throat, though, Harry thought, and the kelpie was no longer looming over him. He heaved himself up, knees bobbing, throat aching as if he'd gone for a run and breathed in icicles all the way.

_Well, I did go for a run, _he thought inanely in the next moment.

Bellatrix was lying on the ground, clutching at her eyes. The kelpie, head lowered in a way that suggested it couldn't see, either, was in full stride straight for the lake. Harry had just raised his head in time to see it reach the edge of the water and dive in. The lake parted around it and closed without a single ripple.

A crack sounded from behind him. Harry turned. Bellatrix had Apparated out.

And Snape was coming towards him.

He was striding powerfully along, and Harry thought, with the vague shock of a mind still trying to recover itself, that he looked better than he had ever done. Probably he would say that he belonged in the Potions lab, hunched over a cauldron, but action suited him. Harry wondered for a moment if he could have found Snape beautiful when he was battling him at the end of sixth year, if he hadn't just killed Dumbledore.

Then he shook his head. The past was gone, and there was no reason to recall it now. He drove his elbows into the grass and had risen halfway back to his feet by the time Snape reached him.

"I suppose you are proud of yourself." Snape's voice was clipped. He kept his eyes on the lake as if he expected the kelpie to reappear, which for all Harry knew it would. He didn't know much about them except the most basic, elementary facts that had turned out not to apply in this dimension.

"Not really," Harry said. He pushed his hair away from his face, and then winced as his fractured wrist caught his attention. He wondered if a splint was the best bet, or if Snape would have a healing potion. Snape had explained that potions, because they required so few spells, were not subject to the restrictions on magic that occurred in this particular place, but that didn't mean he had the time, space, or ingredients to brew the ones that were meant to mend broken bones.

Snape said nothing. Harry looked up and found that he was looking at Harry with his lips parted, as though something about Harry's face were stunning.

"What?" Harry asked.

"Nothing," Snape said, and Harry was not sure what was more acidic, the single word or the way he spun on his heel and stormed back to the cottage. Harry followed, checking the surface of the lake and the grass where Bellatrix had lain. But there was no trace of them left, not even the blood that must have fallen from their wounds. Harry sighed. There were a few spells he could have performed with the blood, though none of them were ones that he was supposed to use as an Auror.

"Are you injured?" Snape said the moment they entered the cottage. He kept his head turned away, every line of his back radiating disdain. Harry reckoned it was because Snape had expected him to find more adequate ways to defend himself against one witch and one kelpie, even given the small range of spells he could use.

Harry had expected the same thing. So he kept his voice neutral instead of snappish when he said, "A fractured wrist. Or maybe it's broken, but it doesn't hurt enough for that."

Snape stiffened even more and stepped over to a low shelf Harry hadn't noticed before, cowering as it was behind a collection of tall, straight vials. "You consider yourself an expert on what broken bones feel like?" he inquired in a soft, ugly voice as he picked up one pot and turned around with it. The pot was made of orange clay, and when he didn't hand it to Harry, Harry wondered what he'd have to do to get it. The ugly owl swooped past Harry's head, dropping a feather in the dust as it went, and perched on Snape's shoulder, regarding him with hostile eyes.

"Yes," Harry said. "I've had enough of them in my training." He waited, and when Snape still didn't do anything, he reached out towards the pot with his good hand.

Snape pulled it back with a hiss. "This is a salve that will lend strength to the bone and speed the healing," he said. "But I do not intend to see someone clumsy, who will lose half the salve in _gobbets, _put it on."

"I'm not that clumsy," Harry tried to protest, but Snape had broken the wax seal on the pot and gestured curtly. Harry sighed and rolled his sleeve up, holding out his arm. Fine, if Snape wanted to do this, this was the way they would play it.

_I don't have much to be ashamed of, _Harry reminded himself. _I woke Snape up, I got Bellatrix out of the house so she wouldn't smash anything, and I held my own against the kelpie until I couldn't anymore._

But that had been the point. He had held his own until he _couldn't_. He should have thought of aiming for the kelpie's and Bellatrix's eyes, but he hadn't. It would have been difficult, granted, since he'd been running from them and would have had to cast the spell over his shoulder, but the thought should have entered his head.

Then Snape's salve-covered fingers made contact with his wrist.

Harry sucked in a breath. The salve tingled, which he had half-expected since a lot of potions seemed to do that, but then it turned his skin numb, and then it revived the skin again in a flash of cold, and then there was heat.

And all through it, Snape's strong, slender fingers continued massaging the salve into his skin, slipping out to encircle Harry's wrist lightly and tug, turning his hand over, examining the bone with gentle nudges and bumps.

The salve was a problem, Harry decided, as he half-closed his eyes and fought to keep his head from lolling backwards. It _increased _Snape's touch somehow. Enhanced it. He had never felt like this when someone touched his wrists before, and he thought he would have _known _if the skin there was so sensitive; he'd had enough people grab him there or try to hold him prisoner while they ranted at him about their mad political opinions.

This time, his heartbeat and his breathing seemed to still, and the rest of him might have melted down to a trembling breeze. There was nothing to feel, nothing to sense but the changing, drifting sensations of the salve and the changing, drifting, remarkably feathery way that Snape touched him.

_It has to be done soon, _Harry told himself. _The fracture wasn't that bad, and I'm sure Snape's no more a fan of touching me than I am. It just feels this way because-because the salve is strange, that's all._

Snape's eyes rose to his face. Harry knew it was too much to hope that he looked _normal_, let alone composed, but he cleared his throat and tried to return the gaze expectantly.

"One more pass should smooth this in," Snape said, and lowered his eyes as he made a more careful circle around Harry's wrist.

Harry looked down, half-dazed and hoping to check for himself whether Snape was telling the truth. There was still a slick shimmer on the skin that could be the last of the salve, he supposed. But Snape would finish in a moment, and then it would be _done_. Of course it was. It had to be. The sensation of stretched time he had now, and the idea that he could identify each of Snape's fingertips by feel, was ridiculous.

Ridiculous or not, it stayed, and Snape held his wrist when it was finished, not cradling it but displaying Harry's hand across his palm as if he were showing it like a treasure to someone else. Maybe the world's most judgmental audience of Healers, Harry thought crazily. Or maybe this was the way that he would show a finished potion to Voldemort.

That thought finally cured Harry's strange reluctance to move, and he pulled his hand back. Snape inhaled once, a strong pull of air through fluttering nostrils, and then turned away, capped the salve with something Harry couldn't see, and put it back.

"Do not move the wrist fast or far for the next three hours," he said. "You must sleep in a comfortable position."

Harry nodded shortly. "I'll sleep outside the cottage, propped up, in case Bellatrix comes back," he said. "Wand across my lap. I've done it before."

Snape turned around with an inscrutable expression on his face. "What did I say, Potter? Comfortable, and I meant it."

"That _is _going to be comfortable," Harry said. He felt as though soft darkness was pressing in around him, darkness that he could see through if he made just a bit more of an effort, but even that effort would be too much, and tip some sort of delicate balance.

_And these thoughts make no sense. What I need to do is continue my argument with Snape. _Harry shook his head and made himself speak. "My wrist is going to rest in my lap. And if you're worried about me not being able to sleep-" he hoped the incredulity in those words would convey that he _knew _Snape wasn't worried "-you shouldn't be. Auror training teaches you to sleep in more unlikely positions."

Snape simply waited. Harry blinked tiredly and sighed. A soft, warm sensation was spreading up his arm from his wrist, probably a side-effect of the salve. He didn't know what Snape wanted him to say, and the thought of sleep felt so good that he could barely stand it.

"Down, Potter."

_Stop talking to me like I'm a dog, _Harry wanted to say, but that was similar to a thought he'd had once before, when he decided that he would try not to criticize Snape as much. Or that he had already criticized Snape too much, but in the future he could do so as long as he thought about what he was criticizing.

Or something. His thoughts were slowing and piling up, as thick as treacle, and he reached out to catch himself on the edge of a table.

Snape seized his hand in a clasp that made a harsh, squeezing sensation travel up his left arm in contrast to the warm one creeping along his right. That should have made him wake up, Harry _knew _it, but even the slightest touch now seemed to urge him towards sleep. He sighed and mumbled, "I can sit up."

"You nearly tipped a potion off a table, you imbecile," Snape responded curtly, and steered him around what Harry could only assume were more obstacles. Then he felt the pallet beneath his back, and the single thin blanket that was all they had to share settling over them. "Here. Spread your hands out-like that, yes. You may fold your left arm in to your chest, but the right wrist should not be moved." He made a rustling noise, and Harry didn't know if it was a charm or a physical piece of cloth that tied his wrist down. Probably a cloth; he thought he would have known about it by now if Snape could use an immobilizing spell of any kind.

"What about you?" Harry managed to say. It really did feel ridiculously comfortable, but he could picture the pallet in his mind, and he knew there wasn't enough room for Snape to lie down if he was sprawled out like this.

"I shall make my own arrangements."

That was what Harry thought he said, anyway. The words blurred and broke apart into whirling darkness, shells of roses and eggs and the bones of skulls. He chased the fragments down, and was gone before he thought about it.

* * *

When Harry woke, he was warmer than he had been since he came to this dimension. He frowned and blinked at the ceiling, then turned his head when he caught a glimpse of black out of the corner of his eye.

Snape was...

Harry blinked. He saw the way Snape was lying, or did after he focused his eyes a bit and thought about it, but he didn't know how Snape could possibly have managed it without waking Harry up.

He was _beneath _Harry, and half-wrapped around him, cradling him to his chest. The intense warmth Harry had felt, reminiscent of the salve from the night before, was Snape's arms holding him, his body supporting Harry. And somehow he had done that without disturbing the binding that he had placed on Harry's wrist. Harry tried to lift his hand, saw the knotted cloth around it, and reached over to work the knot free.

"Good morning."

Harry could _feel _Snape's voice rumbling up through his chest. The arms around him tightened, and the only thought in Harry's head for a minute was what Ron would say if he saw this. He would probably decide that Snape's latest nefarious plan was to choke Harry to death.

"Er, good morning," Harry said, and untied the cloth. When he turned his hand over, the wrist felt fine, and a quick glance at the light coming in through the window showed that the three hours Snape had told him to avoid using it had long since passed. He touched the skin and bone, then did it again, more harshly, when nothing hurt. He grinned at Snape over his shoulder. "That worked well. Thanks."

"Hmm." Snape gave him a single lazy blink, and then reached up and laid one hand on Harry's forehead, as if checking for fever.

Harry froze, staring at him. What was going on? Snape's fingers were moving very slowly where he touched Harry's forehead, as if he thought he was going to frighten Harry away if he pressed harder. And his eyes had resumed that lazy blinking. It was odd. It was-

_Weird, _Harry decided, and ripped his gaze away, struggling to stand up.

Snape kept him in place without apparent effort. And, all right, Harry had to admit to himself, maybe he wasn't struggling that hard. He didn't know what else would happen, now that everything had tilted out of alignment, and he especially didn't want to know what would happen if he touched Snape in any place below the belt.

"There is nothing urgent we must do this morning," Snape whispered to him. "Relax. I have no potions brewing."

"The Beltane ritual," Harry said, and then held his breath and counted to ten. He didn't _want _to sound as if he were frightened of Snape. When he could speak without his voice cracking, he went on. "We should practice it some more."

"We have a fortnight." Snape's voice was still deep, still calm, still uncomplicated. "I am confident of your ability to learn it by the end of that time." He traced his finger across Harry's lightning bolt scar.

Harry had to close his eyes and look away. No one had touched him there except when he couldn't prevent it. Now he could have, but he couldn't bring himself to raise his hand and interfere.

_Why not?_

He didn't know. The reasons dissolved in a silence as deep as Snape's while he arranged Harry across the middle of his chest and-Harry knew although he didn't dare look to confirm it-closed his eyes again. A moment later, he began to breathe in the regular motions of slumber, though Harry knew there was no way he could have fallen asleep that quickly.

He didn't know what to do, but the questions were slowing down, the images and thoughts blurring at the edges again, as they had done when he had first fallen asleep. A beam of sunlight stroked his cheek. Instead of making him feel as if he should be up and working, the way it usually did on the rare mornings when he slept late, it instead made him feel as lazy and contented as a Kneazle.

He did manage to think, before he dissolved and gave in to the dissolving, that it would be sort of hard to blame _this _on the salve.

* * *

"In the face of the morning-"

"In the face of the morning-"

"I pledge myself-"

"I pledge myself-"

"To the gift of myself in the ritual of protection."

"To the gift of myself in the ritual of protection."

Harry's words echoed after Snape's, but he knew it wouldn't be much longer before they were echoing alongside. He still got a few words wrong without the repetition, but that was all.

Snape paused, staring at him. Harry looked back, wondering what he had done wrong now, knowing that it must be something because it was _always _something with Snape, but at least cleared by his own conscience. He waited, and still Snape said nothing, instead looking at Harry as if he were a strange specimen that had appeared from unknown seed in Snape's garden.

Then Snape turned and went into the house, leaving Harry to sway and blink at the air and feel as though someone had pushed him into the ordinary world again from a dream.

There had been a lot of moments like that lately, Harry thought as he went to weed the garden. Since the morning that he had woken up in Snape's arms-such a _weird _thing to contemplate-there were silences between them that had a new, different charge. Snape wouldn't move away as fast. He would stare longer. His eyes wouldn't always be narrowed with hatred, either.

Harry didn't know what to think.

Oh, he would have known what to _call _it if Snape was a woman, but even then it would still have been strange, with all the history between them. And maybe he could call it the same thing even though Snape was a man, but that just skewed things further to the side.

Why? There was no way that he could find Harry attractive when he looked like James. Harry had made mistakes since he got here: nearly being drowned by the kelpie, not coming up with the right use of a simple spell when Bellatrix and the kelpie were chasing him, gathering the wrong plants sometimes. So it wasn't as though he had transformed through the years since they'd seen each other into a perfect Potions student, either.

Puzzling over that, Harry didn't realize how much time had gone past until his stomach growled and Snape's voice spoke sharply from behind him. "There is nothing left in the garden to murder, Mr. Potter, unless you mean to start on the flowers."

Harry straightened up, swiveling his torso and digging his hands into the back to ease the ache, and turned around to nod to Snape. "All right." He didn't use as much silence as he used to, but refusing to react to Snape's taunts and angry words still seemed to be the right thing to do.

Once again, Snape gave him an intense, narrow-eyed look, with Merlin knew what emotions brewing behind it. Harry stood still and stoic and watched him until Snape turned away and said, "Lunch is ready."

Harry nodded again, although Snape couldn't see him make the gesture, and then trailed after him into the house. As usual, it was some kind of grassy soup, but this time there was also a slab of meat beside it. Harry poked it with his fork and started at Snape in disbelief.

"Sometimes my owl hunts for himself," Snape said, lifting a spoonful to his mouth and then leaning over to beat the bubbles and foam from the rim of a cauldron. "Lately, he has started to bring me his kills."

It made Harry a bit queasy to think that he could be eating mouse or squirrel, but he was so hungry for something different that he didn't care. He devoured the meat in between sips of the soup, and sighed when he was done. Greasy and gamy, but at least it didn't crunch in the middle like the soup did-or at least not for the same reason.

"Thanks," he said, stretching his arms above his head when he was finished, and turning somewhat reluctantly to the rest of his meal.

"Spoiled, Potter?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "That would be a little hard to achieve here, don't you think?" he said as lightly as he could manage. And that was really the only thing he was going to say about it. He picked up his glass of water and drank from it. Snape had told him that he fetched the water from a small pool at the back of the garden, which had eased Harry's fears that he was drinking something full of kelpie magic, or, worse, kelpie piss.

"I meant that you have been spoiled all along, before you came here." Snape's voice was low, but Harry could still hear a tone in it that he instinctively distrusted. He kept his eyes away from Snape's as he continued eating.

"Answer me, Potter, or I shall think that you have no respect for me after all."

And there he went, getting spiteful again. Harry sighed and lifted his gaze. "I've eaten a lot of good meals," he said. "But not as many as you might think. Ron and Hermione don't have a lot of time for going out, I'm not that great a cook, and the Aurors think we ought to live on tea."

"Poor you," Snape said, with a sneer uglier than any Harry had seen since the first week he'd been there. The owl fluttered in through the window and landed on his shoulder, staring at Harry and emphasizing its likeness to its owner. "One might think that you were incapable of learning more so that you might feed yourself, or buying good food, or going to a restaurant on your own."

"Yeah, you might think that," Harry said, with a casual shrug, and kept the rest of what he wanted to say behind his tongue. _If you were stupid. _He stood up with the bowl and glass, and as usual Snape whisked them away. What he did with them, Harry had no idea, but he did know that they seemed to always have clean dishes. That was enough for him.

_Better than what I can do with my robes, _Harry thought, and plucked at them, grimacing. He used Cleaning Charms on them constantly, but they were probably going to fall apart from being worn sooner or later. On the other hand, being naked in front of Snape was not an option.

_Especially not now, _Harry thought, and stretched out his hand to retrieve his latest half-finished letter to Ron.

Snape's hand crashed down on his, and he snarled, "Answer me, Potter."

"I don't know what you want me to answer," Harry retorted, glaring up at him. "Stupid questions about food? You're just trying to start a fight, and I don't know why, except it's probably because you're uncomfortable when we aren't fighting and have to prove something to yourself-"

He stared when Snape's hand whipped away from his as if he had encountered a snake and he stood, face blotchy with blood. For an instant, his eyes glittered, and the owl shifted on his shoulder, feathers rising. Harry lifted his hand, though Snape probably knew how to use the limited spells better than he did.

Then Snape stiffened in every muscle of his body, hissed between his teeth like a teakettle, and turned and stomped away. He slammed the door open and shut hard enough that a few of the cauldrons wobbled.

Harry sat there, blinking.

_Er. All right, then._

He tried to think it through, but he had already given up on ever understanding Snape unless he wanted to be understood, so he picked up his parchment and ink again and started writing. He knew better than to go outside right now.

* * *

"How long did it take you to learn to keep your temper?"

Harry, who was bent over pulling weeds again, rolled his eyes, because Snape couldn't see. Now the charged silences had been replaced with random questions, which Snape would launch at him suddenly. Perhaps he thought he could trap Harry in a lie and then-

And then what? It wasn't as if Snape was going to kick him out of the house or this dimension before they finished the Beltane ritual, now only a week away. So that left Harry unable to figure out _what _he was doing.

_As usual._

"I don't know," he ended up saying, and tugged at a particularly stubborn weed that seemed to have its roots halfway to China. If there _was _a China here. Harry was curious about the history of the place, beyond what Snape had already told him, but hadn't asked questions because the less often the silence between them was broken, the better off he thought he would probably be. "I don't think I have full control of it even now."

Silence for long enough that Harry thought Snape had dropped the subject. He rested for the moment, arms dangling off his knees, and shut his eyes so that the sweat could creep past them. This place was a lot hotter than he could remember Hogwarts ever being in the spring.

"The Aurors would have insisted on training of some kind," Snape said, as if musing to himself. "They couldn't have one of their most famous recruits letting insults fly when he was arresting someone who happened to be a former Slytherin."

Harry snorted and used his fingers to push away the dirt from an entangled clump of leaves and roots, so that he could be sure he was pulling the weed instead of the ingredient that Snape needed. "Strange to say, I can't identify House affiliation at a glance, and most of the people I arrest don't volunteer it."

Snape spoke almost immediately, which was unlike him, voice high and strained. "Do not be ridiculous, Potter. You must have arrested at least one person you knew from Hogwarts."

Harry shook his head, swiped at a curlicue of hair that was dangling in his eyes, and then cursed mildly when he realized he'd streaked it with dirt. "No, unless you count the time I had to bring Draco Malfoy in on a charge of drinking too much and trying to show his wand off to the Muggles."

"I am sure that you were a sterling representative of the Auror Department on the occasion." Snape now sounded like he had something in his throat.

Harry took a risk, and twisted about. Snape was trimming the leaves from around a green stalk with a pair of small scissors and had looked up, perhaps because he saw Harry move, so Harry had a fairly good view of his face.

There could be no doubt, no matter how reluctant the curl of Snape's lip was. The choke in his voice was laughter.

"I might have snickered once or twice," Harry said peacefully, looking back down at the weed he was trying to pull free with a twitch of satisfaction in his stomach. _Snape can laugh. He doesn't always disagree with me. He'd probably like to, but he can't. _"Not that Malfoy remembered anything about it when he woke up in the morning."

"How do you know?" Snape's voice had become cold and distant again. "Mr. Malfoy did not usually reveal the state of his mind to anyone who did not know him well."

"If you're trying to imply that it was a loss not to know him well, you can stop and save yourself the breath." Harry pushed more sweaty hair away from his neck, and, he was sure, streaked more dirt across it. "I know because I didn't receive an owl the next morning yammering about the way I treated him. So I'm fairly sure he doesn't remember."

More silence. Harry nodded as he separated weed and plant and yanked the weed free with a crisp snapping sound.

Something touched his shoulder.

Harry looked up and around, but he didn't see any insect, and there was no tree or other plant nearby that could have done it; hopeful seeds grew much better in Snape's garden than outside it, but they rarely reached any height before Snape either eliminated them or cut them for Potions ingredients. Then he heard the creaking footsteps behind him and the swish of robes that indicated Snape had passed behind him towards the house.

Harry stood up slowly and thoughtfully, not turning around because he didn't feel like confronting what might have been a brush from Snape's hand right now.

_Why would he do that? _

Why did Snape do anything?

* * *

_Bellatrix went after Neville last night. Luckily, he lives behind strong wards that his grandmother set up and she didn't manage to hurt him._

Harry sighed with relief and put the letter down. Just imagining what Bellatrix would do if she got her hands on Neville was enough to make him have waking nightmares.

_We're only a few days out from Beltane now, and our recitation of the ritual is word-perfect, _Harry comforted himself. _I don't know if the potions are, but Snape seems confident in them, and I'll have to be. _

He smiled a little. Even after three years of Auror training, he still recognized potions best when someone put them in a labeled vial or poured them down his throat. He doubted Snape would approve of Harry testing all his potions by tasting them.

Harry stretched out on the grass near the cottage-keeping one wary eye out for the kelpie-and stared up at the sun, which seemed half-hidden behind a dark shimmer. The necromancy spell, Harry reckoned. It might not even be there, but since Snape had given him that vision, he always saw it.

Would Snape give him potions in a vial if he did demand that Harry recognize them? Or would he fill a ladle and hold it out, shining and fresh from the cauldron, with his eyes so demanding that Harry would have no choice but to...

Harry's breath tailed off, and he closed his eyes. For a few minutes, he concentrated on the pressure of the sun's warmth against his chest. Nothing wrong with that, though it was probably still off from what it should be because of Ravenclaw's spell.

He shouldn't think things like that.

The thought remained in his head, however, patiently waiting to be acknowledged.

And why not? Harry thought, rolling over restlessly and raising himself on his elbows to look at the lake. The water lapped the edge of the shore, darker than it should be. What was so unusual about thinking of Snape with a ladle full of potion? It was a normal enough image. He had probably seen it once or twice, though Snape had never held the ladle out to him. He had always stared at it, usually in disgust, and then dashed it back into the cauldron. Harry had the impression that he didn't need to look at potions that closely when they were going well.

_It's a problem, _he thought then, quite clearly, as his hips rocked against the ground and he realized that he was pressing his groin against it, too, _because I'm hard._

Harry spent a little more time in the sun before he went inside to answer Hermione's letter, but he was trying his very best not to think.

* * *

"Why hasn't Bellatrix come back to try and stop us?" Harry demanded, the evening before the ritual. He was jittery, and he couldn't help it. He had been jumping all day, imagining attacks from the kelpie, running outside when he heard noises that sounded too loud to be the wind. It would make sense that Bellatrix or her Horcrux would try to interrupt the ritual that was meant to destroy them.

Snape lowered the long scroll of parchment he was reading. Harry wasn't sure if that was instructions for another potion, instructions for the ritual, or the latest edition of _Potions Masters' Gossip. _If his owl could fly through the barrier to fetch mice and other small animals that didn't live in this world, and carry letters, why couldn't it bring back newspapers? "Please do not tell me that you don't know the answer to that."

Harry paused. Snape was acting _weird _again, the way he had the other day when he laughed with Harry about Malfoy and then probably touched his shoulder. His words sounded normal, as though he truly thought Harry was of too great an intelligence to require an answer to that question, not insulting.

That made Harry rake his fingers through his hair and think about it. He didn't know the answer, so he had asked Snape, but maybe he _could _know the answer. Was there any reason that this should be an insoluble problem, good for someone only of Snape's intellect?

_And since when do I acknowledge that he's smarter than me?_

Harry had to sift through the distracting thoughts before he could reach the one that was probably the truth, but once he did, he felt a bit stupid for asking the question in the first place. "Because she's mad," he said slowly, looking up at Snape, "and she doesn't have rational thought patterns. Plus, she probably doesn't know exactly what we're planning."

"Just so," Snape said, his eyes steady on Harry's face, as if they had shared some profound secret instead of a fact. "I have left no notes about, and I do not trust her ability to recognize potions in general, let alone at a glance and in the dark. There is no way that she _could _have learned about it unless she was intercepting the letters she wrote to your friends."

"I didn't consider that-" Harry said in alarm, looking at the ugly owl. It was preening itself on a perch in the corner of the room, but glanced up the minute he moved, watching him with hostile, metallic eyes.

"He would not let Bellatrix touch him," Snape said, and a sneer twisted his lip when Harry turned again. "Do you think an owl with the ability to fly between dimensions could be captured so easily?"

"I don't know," Harry said honestly. "I don't know what makes him able to do that, so maybe it's something Bellatrix can exploit."

Snape paused, then inclined his head. "Just so," he said again. "However, you may rest assured that, at least in this case, his ability is not a vulnerability."

Harry nodded and returned to his letter. It was only when he was settling onto the pallet that night, trying to keep from touching Snape too much, that he remembered Snape never _had _said what the source of his owl's ability was.

* * *

"Awaken, Harry."

The words were so strange that they made Harry struggle to sit up. No one he knew would use both such a formal tone and his first name. He reached for his glasses, half-wondering if McGonagall was here, or if Dumbledore's death had been a dream-

Hands settled on his shoulders, and Snape's voice murmured in his ear, "You will not need your glasses this morning."

Harry took a tense breath, wondering if he could trust him, if he should. Snape hadn't said anything about leaving off his glasses during the ritual.

But perhaps he hadn't said anything because it was too small to mention. Harry had found that people who didn't wear glasses often didn't understand how helpless he felt without them.

_Or maybe he's doing it to fuck with me and to control information again. But you knew he was like that in the first place, and you agreed to go through with this anyway._

Harry ducked his chin down towards his chest in what Snape could take as a nod if he liked, and it seemed he did like. His hands softened their grip on Harry's shoulders and helped Harry to his feet. Harry stood swaying, peering ahead and wondering if he would be able to discern the tables enough to keep from bumping into them. It would be just like him to spill the potions and upend the precious cauldrons _now_, when everything should be ready and a simple matter of them applying equations and making decisions.

"This way," Snape said, tucking his arm under Harry's as if he were a guide. "I shall lead you."

"Er, thanks," Harry mumbled, and began to shuffle along, obeying Snape's directions about whether to go to left or right. Snape seemed to have cleared the cottage out. At least, Harry's trailing feet didn't catch anything and send it ringing or clanging or shattering to the floor, and Harry reached the cottage door and felt sunlight on his face. That was good enough for him.

"You will need to bathe," Snape said, close to his ear.

Harry nodded. The ritual cleansing was part of what Snape had told him about first, a hard glint in his eye as if he expected Harry to object to it most. Harry didn't, because they couldn't use the lake, thanks to the kelpie. The small stream near the garden was their only option, and that meant Harry wouldn't strip completely.

"All over," Snape added.

Harry snapped his glare to the side. "You didn't say anything about that-" he began, but Snape raised a hand, and he stopped with a gulp.

_Right. _No disharmony between them, no disunion, on the morning of the ritual, Snape had preached. They might not like each other, as most of the participants in this particular ritual hadn't, but they needed to avoid artificial separation from one another. Harsh words where no harsh words were needed would effect such a separation.

"All right," Harry said, and thought Snape squeezed his arm in approval before he took off the shirt that he always wore when sleeping with Snape.

Snape's hands fell to rest on his hips with casual familiarity, and Harry understood the silent message. He would need to take the trousers off, too, and the pants. Harry grimaced, but nodded.

_Just a part of what you need to do when you're saving the world, _he reminded himself, as he perched on one foot and dragged them off, hoping absurdly that _now _was not the moment Bellatrix would choose to show up. _And it's not as though Snape is taking a lesser risk than you or doesn't have the same problems to overcome._

That calmed Harry. He didn't know exactly when it had begun, but he could respect Snape a little more now, and appreciate what he had sacrificed. And Snape had been a _bit _less snappish in the last few days, for whatever reason.

He tugged off his pants and kept his eyes firmly on the ground, glad now that he was missing his glasses and so couldn't see the smirk that was doubtless on Snape's face. Then he turned to the garden and started to walk in the direction that he thought he remembered the stream being.

Snape's hand caught his elbow again. "This way," he murmured. His voice was deep with amusement and something else that made Harry shiver, then shake his head irritably. He didn't know what was _wrong _with him lately. Getting hard when he was alone was one thing, but he shouldn't do it now.

He ought to keep his mind on the Beltane ritual, where it belonged. Yes.

It had never seemed like a long walk from Snape's house to the stream before, but it was different when Harry was naked. His feet found new places to step in, new bits of mud and stones and sticks to stumble over, and the world was full of unexpected tingles and prickles. Even grass felt odd.

Harry shook his head. His mind was getting hazy, and he hadn't even had one of Snape's potions yet. That boded poorly for what would happen when he did.

"Here is the stream," Snape said, again close to his ear, a moment after Harry splashed into the cool water.

Harry snorted, hoping Snape would take it as an expression of pure annoyance, and asked, "What should I use for soap?"

"This." Snape placed something smooth and slippery into his hand. Harry squeezed, and decided it was probably actual soap, although it smelled strongly of-hawthorn? He opened his mouth to ask what it was made of.

Then he closed his mouth, remembering the way Snape had reacted to his obvious question about Bellatrix last night, and dipped the soap into the water. He should think this out for himself, again. If Snape could make potions and his own food, he could probably make soap, too.

Harry washed himself slowly, waiting for directions in case he was supposed to do something more complicated with the soap, and wondering whether Snape would watch him or not. Sometimes he thought he could hear the light breathing from a short distance away, sometimes not. And he refused to look around, so he remained unsure until he finished and placed the soap gingerly on a mat of leaves next to the stream.

"Now," Snape said from behind him.

Harry hoped he hadn't jumped as he turned around. Snape was a blur of black, and Harry frowned at him. "Don't you need to bathe, too?" he asked, as he reluctantly held out an arm and let Snape help him into something green. It was a robe, but the fabric was so thin that Harry shivered as he climbed out of the stream and tried to ignore both Snape's faint smile-how could he see it, anyway?-and his body's potential interest.

"I do," Snape said, and slid something off his shoulders that turned out to be his robe. Harry hastily turned his head so that he wouldn't-well, do things, that was all. "But I need your help to cleanse myself."

Harry wanted to ask why, but bit his tongue. Snape was probably waiting for a challenge like that so he could get all distant and superior, and Harry would rather not have a row about this now.

_Concentrate on the practicalities, _he told himself as he picked up the soap again. _It's what's got you through things so far. _Head bowed as he dipped his hands into the water to work up a good lather, he asked as neutrally as he could, "Do I get my glasses back? It's going to be hard to see you enough to clean you without them."

"You do not need to see," Snape said, and turned around in the stream so that Harry suddenly found himself faced with an expanse of pale chest. Harry felt his cheeks flush, but he gritted his teeth and kept his gaze straight ahead. He had faced worse than this, many times. "You only need to feel," Snape continued, and reached up to close his fingers around Harry's wrist, guiding his hand with the soap closer to his body.

Harry took a deep breath and nodded, then began to wash Snape.

It was...an experience. Harry thought he would use that word to describe it if someone ever asked him. Snape's muscles flexed with his breathing, and Harry did his best to avoid Snape's nipples, because he wasn't sure what would happen if he touched them. Then he had to get under the armpits, and there was something strange about the curves of Snape's skin where it bent up to meet his shoulder that caused Harry to shudder.

"I am not so bad, am I, Potter?"

Snape sounded like a human being, which meant that Harry had no idea what he was supposed to say in response. He settled for grunting instead, and vigorously smeared lather across Snape's collarbone.

Snape seized his wrist suddenly, and said in a half-hissing voice, "You must go more gently, Potter, thanks to my marks of honor."

_Marks of what bloody honor? _Harry thought in instinctive irritation, and then remembered the long, thin scars from Nagini's bite that he had seen on Snape's neck.

He blinked, swallowed, said, "Right," and knelt down so that he could move his hands in more gentle patterns.

Snape let his wrist go slowly. He didn't trail his fingers across Harry's in a caress, or release a deep sigh, or stare meaningfully into Harry's eyes.

He didn't need to.

Harry swallowed, and tried to remind himself that Snape was just as naked and didn't have a foot to stand on as far as Harry was concerned. It didn't help, much. Snape had always been a hypocrite. He would have no compunction about making fun of Harry if Harry's body did something embarrassing.

_When was the last time he did that?_

If Harry trusted Snape enough to go through this ritual with him and drink potions he'd brewed that had been filled with Merlin knew what ingredients, then surely he trusted him enough not to think that an insult was around every corner.

He followed the lines of the scars, slowly, waiting for a sign of discomfort from Snape. There was none. When Harry pulled back his hands and dipped them into the water again, Snape breathed out once, and Harry had a feeling those intense eyes were on him.

He was glad that he didn't have his glasses, then, and had a good reason not to return that particular intimidating stare.

"My back, now," Snape said, and turned around, dipping his head down as if he assumed that Harry needed to wash the back of his neck as well.

Come to that, he probably did.

Harry splayed his hands out and moved them in circles over Snape's spine, then began spreading outwards, crooking his fingers when he thought a knot in one particular muscle might escape his notice, trying to make sure that every dip was covered. Snape froze once, then began to breathe more slowly.

_Trying to control himself, _Harry thought with a smirk, and he decided that he might as well give Snape some payback for the strangeness that he had already put Harry through.

He dug his fingers in harder and rubbed his knuckles up and down the lines of Snape's shoulder blades, as if giving him a massage. Snape both groaned and sighed, head falling into his hands. Harry hummed and played a light, staccato rhythm with his fingertips before moving down.

With his glasses off, he couldn't see Snape's arse as well, but he could see enough. The water didn't completely hide it. Harry stared unabashedly, partially because it was as narrow and skinny as he'd always thought it would be, and partially because he knew he was seeing a sight that not many people in the world could have had.

And partially because of the same tightness that had awakened him in the sunshine the other day.

"That is enough," Snape said abruptly, as Harry's hands reached the flare of his buttocks. "You will find a green robe on the grass behind you. Hand it to me."

_Task accomplished, _Harry thought with vindictive satisfaction, and reached back, feeling the folds of cloth as slippery as the soap had been. He gripped it hard to prevent it from slipping out of his reach and brought it forwards to drape around Snape's shoulders.

Snape tensed, then accepted it once he heard the cloth sigh and slide.

_Maybe he has as much trouble trusting me as I do him, _Harry thought, and that melted a small knot of icy resistance he hadn't realized he was still carrying inside him. He reached down, took Snape's hand, and helped him up from the stream.

Snape turned to face him, eyes so intense that Harry wanted to look down. But there was no reason to do that, not now. He lifted his head and returned Snape stare for flat stare instead, waiting to see what he would do.

"How interesting," Snape said, in the sort of voice that indicated he didn't care whether Harry had heard him or not, and then turned away. "Come, Potter," he said, this time really beckoning the way he would a dog, and stalked away into the death-cursed plain without looking back.

_Time to go, _Harry thought, and followed him without a pause.

Or much regret, really.

Excitement moved through his veins like blood.

* * *

It was odd. The space Snape had chosen for the ritual wasn't a clearing in any ordinary sense of the word, the way he had said they would need. There were no trees around it-couldn't be, since the single scrawny tree grew by the lake instead of closer to the house. It was nothing more than a circle in the grass that Snape had scraped with another dragon's claw and directed Harry to enter with a haughty nod.

And yet, once Harry was inside it, it seemed to transform itself in the same way that the ordinary walk from the house to the stream had transformed itself once he was no longer wearing his glasses. He could feel his breath coming faster, and a slight chill pressed on his skin that he hadn't noticed before. If a wall of golden light had arisen from the circle to surround them and lock them away from the outside world, he wouldn't have been surprised.

Snape stepped into the center of the circle and halted, facing him. Harry shook off the odd sensations and walked forwards until he stood opposite him. He couldn't see Snape's face at the moment, as the other man had his head bowed, his hair falling over his features.

_I want to._

Harry licked his lips, not sure what to do with the desire any more than he was with the sensations inspired by the circle, and then Snape looked up.

Harry found it difficult to make out individual twitches and lines on his face, but that didn't matter. The piercing intensity of that gaze went straight through him and left him unable to move. If Snape had stepped forwards and drawn his wand with the intent of casting the Killing Curse, Harry didn't know if he could have resisted.

_Not that he _can _cast the Killing Curse here, _he reminded himself an instant later, but that didn't lessen the power of his feelings.

Snape's voice was quiet. "In the face of the morning," he began.

Harry joined in at once, grateful that they had practiced the words so much that they ran inside his head when he went to sleep. This was something he knew, and knew what to do with. As long as they had to recite and drink the potions and do nothing else, he could get through this.

_Why should we have to do anything else? Snape promised that the words and the potions would be enough to call Beltane's attention and give us the ability to pierce through the kelpie's defenses into the lake. To do anything else would mess up the ritual the way he described it to me._

Yet, the feeling lingered, joining all the other strange ones swirling in the back of his mind. Harry chanted his way through the first few lines, and drank the small vials of cool-tasting potion that Snape handed him, and finally arrived at the first part of the ritual where their promises diverged.

"I bind myself now to someone with the power to support me, to save me, to fight beside me, to awe me. As the _dominus_ of this land, I will consider my relations with my companion as I consider my relations to the land."

Snape spoke the words with his face tilted back, his eyes half-shut, as though enjoying the sunlight on his face. There did seem to be rather more sunlight than there had been a few minutes ago, Harry thought dazedly, and it was brighter and hotter. Had something gone wrong with the necromancy spell that normally dimmed it? Or maybe Beltane was a special occasion, when it just had to shine brighter because that was the way it was.

No thanks to his thoughts, but with strong gratitude to the instincts Snape had trained into him over the last few weeks, Harry began to chant his response. "I bind myself now to someone with the power to support me, to save me, to fight beside me, to awe me. As the _equitum_ of this land, I will follow the _dominus _and obeys the orders he gives me for the continued safety and defense of the realm of earth."

The sunlight _changed. _Harry could still feel it warm on his face, of course, and see the shine beaming out of the corner of his eye, but he could also feel the way it fell on the grass at his feet. He could feel the scattering, the radiation, of it. Bits of himself were traveling to all the corners of the world, riding on the rays, making him bigger than he had been, more powerful, and at the same time weaker, the further they went from the center.

Oh, his throat ached, and his feet wanted to dance and spring away from the burning grass beneath them, and there was another source of warmth in front of him. With some difficulty, Harry looked forwards so that he could find it.

Snape's gaze.

It burned into him, stroked him down, and got under the sheer green cloth of the robe that draped Harry without trouble. Like sunlight. It made him want to dance or flinch or _move_, and tilt his head back so that he could bare himself and feel it better. Like sunlight. It made him jittery with energy to spend, but he didn't know how to do that without breaking the strict traditions of the ritual.

Like the sunlight.

Harry's face flushed, or at least it seemed to, from the extra warmth flooding into his cheeks. That could have come from the sunlight, or Snape. For the moment, though, Harry fought to ignore it, because he might miss one of the signals he was supposed to follow if he gave too much attention to it.

Snape's voice had altered, or else Harry's new perceptions through the sunlight gave him a new perception on that, too. "I will guard this land and this earth from intrusion, from harm. I will fight its enemies. With the weight of my forty-two years I promise this."

_Remember that you need to change the number to your own age when you say this, _Harry thought, but he had to struggle with thickness in his throat before he could speak. Someone had stuffed sunlight in his mouth, he thought dimly. It was exactly like that, speaking through stickiness and heat that spread through his teeth and over his gums and made him think of other warm, sticky things that you could put in someone's mouth.

"I will guard this land and this earth from intrusion, from harm. I will fight its enemies. With the weight of my twenty-two years I promise this."

The sunlight around them took on a low shimmer that Harry thought was sullen at first. He drew a breath of relief. Would his perception go back to normal? He could still see the lake at angles he was sure he shouldn't be seeing it from, and the circle, no real clearing but just a space they had _declared _a clearing, leaned in towards him with strong, insistent pressure.

Then the shimmer expanded, and Harry realized it was a more brilliant yellow than he had ever seen sunlight get, with leaping flickers of orange and red. More like fire-

It settled into the center of the clearing, a glowing ball that coalesced in on itself and became a bonfire. Harry stared. Snape hadn't said that anything like this would happen, and Harry had thought he explained the ritual pretty well, when he had no other choice.

_Unless this is something that he kept from me again, on purpose, _Harry thought, and his heart pounded erratically as his eyes snapped up to Snape's face.

Snape simply leaned out with his hand extended and an expression of intense concentration. His fingers moved back and forth as if he wanted to experience the heat on every knuckle.

"Come to me, Harry," he said.

The command ran like a bolt of lightning from Harry's feet to his groin, and then surged up from his chest to his head. And now his body was transfigured with the light, irradiated with it, shining from the inside out.

He wanted, badly, to go to Snape.

But he didn't simply obey anyone else's commands without knowing why. He folded his arms, though it felt as if he were clutching large cotton cushions to his chest that resisted the movement, and glared. "Why? What's going to happen?"

Snape didn't scold him for messing up the ritual, as Harry had thought would happen. Instead, his eyes glinted, and he gave a little nod, as if speaking to or reassuring someone who stood invisibly beside him.

"Yes," he said. "You deserve to know. We have more of a connection between us than the original ritual was designed to account for. It is so powerful and involves so many promises, distant and formal, because the wizards who created it assumed it would have to overcome hatred or indifference. Beltane rituals are usually less-distant."

Harry's teeth tingled. His head beat as if he'd eaten too much ice cream at once. He longed to move.

But his free will was stronger than even the demands of Beltane. "What are you talking about, Snape?" he asked through gritted teeth, which were clenched down in defiance of his own impulses more than in defiance of Snape. "We _do _hate each other."

Snape said nothing, but moved a step forwards on his side of the fire, lifting his face as if he would look up at the sky and gauge the time from the sun. Harry looked at him instinctively, trying to figure out if he had planned some trap. Perhaps his owl-

He saw Snape's expression, in enough light that it helped to make up for the fuzziness of his sight.

Snape looked calm, expectant, and utterly ordinary. It wasn't the face of a man who hated the person he was with, or even the face of someone who was humiliated that _Harry Potter_, of all people, had to be here. When he turned to look at Harry, the ordinary expression remained, but heated up slightly.

Harry half-closed his eyes. He recalled the moment he had hardened when lying out in the sunlight, the way Snape had touched his wrist when applying the salve, and the pressure of Snape's hands after he had fed Harry the potion that allowed him to see the necromancy spell.

_Maybe it's time to stop lying to myself._

He used the energy at last and strode towards Snape. He didn't look down, since it was hard to turn away from the source of all the warmth, but he wouldn't have been surprised if his feet were leaving sparks that singed the grass.

They met near the fire, and Snape reached out, gripped his jaw as though he assumed he would have to force a potion down Harry's throat again, and waited.

Harry leaned forwards despite the iron fingers pressing against his cheeks, and kissed him.

The fire behind them made a sweeping, sighing, singing sound that Harry had never heard from any flames. Then Harry caught sight of a brilliant explosion from the corner of his eye, and he pulled his head back to stare around.

They were surrounded by brightness. The fire had leaped out of the place where it first coalesced and reformed again around them, melting in and out of pillars and arches and circles and squares, but always keeping them as its focus.

Snape laughed. Harry looked back at him, at the face that was open with triumph, and had the impression that Snape was about to volunteer unnecessary information for the first time in his life.

_Or at least in his acquaintance with me. I don't know every single part of him, not really._

"You have her eyes," Snape said, his fingers tightening now around the back of Harry's neck so that he could tilt his head from side to side. "But more than that, you have stubbornness, and the courage to keep silent, and you have mastered your temper even if you do not think you have. You are not a _child_, and when you ceased your endless questions and kept silent in the face of my taunts, I knew that."

"You're still a bastard," Harry told him. "But not as much of a one as I always thought you were. And you're-I mean, you're better than just a Potions master."

"Do not be ridiculous, Potter," Snape said. "There is no higher title."

But in spite of those words, he leaned forwards to kiss Harry this time, and Harry jumped with a needle-like shock as their tongues touched. He hadn't felt this before, not the same way, though of course he had kissed-and done more than that-with Ginny. He pressed forwards, wondering if the way their chests and groins touched would be as exciting.

Snape stepped back, however, and reached into his robes. "We need not drink as many potions as I had thought we would," he murmured. "The fire is proof of that. If we can call it, then we are closer to the true spirit of Beltane than I had thought possible. But we must still drink the potions that will grant us the ability to breathe underwater. The ritual can move us past the kelpie's defenses, into the depth of the lake, but it cannot ensure we survive there. Or perhaps it would, but I do not want to risk the chance."

Harry paused, breathing hard. Something was wrong, although it took him long moments to shake his mind into realizing what it was.

"But if we don't drink all the potions," he said finally, "and alter space and time, then we're not really fulfilling the constraints of the ritual, are we? How are we going to get the power in the first place, if we don't complete it?"

"We shall complete another, different, ritual later," Snape said, and held out a slender vial of brilliant green potion to Harry. Harry accepted it, unable not to scrape the heel of Snape's palm with his fingernails. Snape hissed, his face twisting away from its calm self for a moment, and Harry's heart and cock both lifted to think about what other circumstances he might see that face in. "We shall make a promise, and that promise will be enough for the forces that surround us."

"A promise?" Harry asked stupidly, the vial dangling in his hand. He wondered if he was supposed to have drunk it already, but Snape had another vial for himself, so he didn't think so.

"Yes," Snape said. "This."

He bit the corner of Harry's mouth, and Harry parted his lips to accept Snape's tongue before he bit back, dueling and driving, leaning hard against him, trying to show him that he wasn't going to be some passive receiver. Snape laughed darkly in the back of his throat, as if he had heard the thought and was dismissing it as readily as Harry did.

The needle of excitement went through Harry again. He could do this. He wanted this. He was going to have it. He didn't understand all the reasons, no, but he hadn't always understood Snape in the past month, and he had got on with him anyway.

His fingers slid into Snape's hair and tugged, and Snape hissed and backed away from him, shaking. Harry grinned smugly at him. He would remember that Snape was sensitive to that, because the look on Snape's face, although he was trying to make it so, was not one of disgust or pain.

"The potion," Snape said, in a voice that was ever so slightly breathless.

Harry uncorked the vial and tilted his head back. The potion tasted much more pleasant than most of the ones Snape had brewed, though as thick and hard to swallow as ever. Harry licked his lips and thought it had something of mint in it, and something of honey.

_Not as good as him._

Harry started to lean forwards again when he noticed that Snape had swallowed his own potion, but choked. Suddenly it seemed as though his lungs wouldn't work right, or the air that filtered into them was too thick. Harry flailed about with his hands and felt Snape catch him, holding him close.

_He's poisoned me after all-_

But the thought popped like a bubble and was gone, even before Snape murmured, gasping, into his ear, "You must think of what we desire, to be in the lake and within the kelpie's defenses. And then you must kiss me."

_Of course. I can't breathe air if we're meant to breathe water._

Harry tilted his head back and did as Snape asked, though he thought it would be difficult to picture the kelpie when he was kissing Snape. Or perhaps not. Battling Bellatrix's Horcrux promised its own kind of dangerous excitement, though perhaps not of the same kind as having sex with Snape.

_Sex with Snape._

Harry shot his hand into Snape's hair again and tugged.

Snape snarled in pleasure, and then the world dissolved around them and came back a dark, deep, drowning green, and filled with velvety water that they could breathe.

And complete with a trumpeting, charging kelpie.

Harry tumbled backwards, knowing the motion would be slower in the water, not sure how well he would escape. Snape swam by above him and held his wand out, speaking an incantation that became bubbles.

Harry was sure that it wouldn't work, but the kelpie whirled as if stung by the jet of hot water Harry felt only the edges of, and sobbed and neighed both at once, a high-pitched, high-strung sound. Harry seized his own wand and cast another _Incendio _that stung its heels. The kelpie stamped on nothing and spun around to face him again.

Only then did Harry realize that Snape had never told him how he intended to _destroy_ Bellatrix's Horcrux, especially without the Sword of Gryffindor about.

Harry swore, knowing that the words would probably become bubbles and nothing more, and flipped himself over in the water, barely escaping a swipe from the kelpie's hooves that would probably have decapitated him. Then he was dodging the teeth, spinning in place as the kelpie swam in a circle around him, trying to compensate for the beast's greater range of movement and speed in the water by his superior intelligence.

The kelpie turned its head, and those burning green eyes sparked through Harry, making him shiver.

_Maybe the intelligence advantage isn't that great after all._

Where was Snape? The water had turned a thicker, darker green around them, maybe because of the kelpie's magic, maybe because they were stirring it up with all the swimming they were doing, maybe because _Harry didn't have his bloody glasses, _and Harry couldn't see him. Fuck, he could barely see the black shape that still darted and wheeled around him, coming closer and closer each time.

Then the kelpie's teeth caught his shoulder.

Harry hissed and whipped sideways, aiming for the kelpie's eyes. It seemed to have healed the damage that Snape's spell had inflicted on it when Bellatrix came to call, but that didn't mean that Harry couldn't use the same trick.

The kelpie swam with him, staying in place, instead of releasing him like Harry had expected. It shook its head, and Harry cried out as he saw swirls of his blood decorate the water. The kelpie let out a muffled vibration that struck through Harry's flesh and muscle, probably one of those wailing neighs of triumph, and latched on, chewing.

The struggle and the spin brought Harry close enough that he could launch a kick at the kelpie's side. It was like kicking a steel drum. Harry winced as his foot bounced off the ribs, and felt his toes ache fiercely for a moment before going numb.

Mentally hoping that wasn't a sign of something much worse, Harry pointed his wand at the kelpie's eyes again. The wand tip was only a few inches from them. He ought to be able to do _something _that would affect them.

"_Diff-"_

The kelpie had learned better, as it proved by releasing him at once and dodging under him. Harry turned down, fighting with his own dizziness from finding an unexpected third dimension beneath his feet, and probably dizziness from loss of blood. If the kelpie had had poison in its teeth to inject into him, too, he wouldn't have been the slightest bit surprised.

There was Snape, swimming up from beneath the kelpie. A slicing motion of his wand, and it belly split open and began to spill blood. The kelpie threw its head back, mane streaming around it, and rolled upside-down to launch a kick at the back of Snape's head as he swept past it.

Harry moved without thinking, the same way he would have if they were out in the open air and he saw a curse heading towards Snape that he would have no time to dodge. He darted forwards, clasped the kelpie around the neck, and wrenched its head to the side.

The kelpie warbled, snorted, and neighed all at the same time. Its hooves flew past Harry, but Harry clung on, plastering himself as close as he could get, and the kelpie would have had to kick itself to reach him.

Harry pressed his wand to the slick skin beneath his hands, which pulsed like a snail, and whispered, "_Diffindo._"

More blood made it harder to hang on, but sent the kelpie into a stamping, whirling frenzy.

Harry caught a glimpse of Snape as he was swung to and fro by the kelpie's latest madness. Snape floated in the midst of the water, his wand in his hand but his gaze directed towards the surface, as if he didn't care that Harry was fighting for his life here. Harry narrowed his eyes. _I could be killed and he wouldn't even notice! I'm going to have a word with him once we get back on land._

_If we get back on land._

The kelpie tossed its head down and bucked, the mane stinging Harry's face as it flew past. Harry spluttered and let go, the breath knocked out of him by the swing of the heavy neck and the reeds that seemed to twine into his face from the mane, binding his mouth and nose, refusing to let him breathe.

The kelpie whirled around with a scream of victory and raised its hooves high. Harry kicked backwards, trying to get away, knowing he wasn't as fast as it was, and wondering all the while if this had been Snape's grand plan: to distract the kelpie with Harry while he prepared some potion or spell that would destroy the beast.

_But he could have bloody _told _me that!_

Kick and lash, and still the kelpie was after him, not touching him yet, but mouth open with anticipation for when it did. Its eyes were distended and wild, and Harry was sure that his looked much the same. He tried to shout for Snape as he aimed his wand and sent more boiling jets of water at the kelpie, but he got no response.

Then something struck the kelpie from above.

_Fucking finally!_ Harry thought as he got out of the way with a half-spin. The kelpie had turned its head and was biting at the thing that seemed fastened to its spine. Harry got his breath and his balance back, and stared.

He had assumed, without thinking about it, that the thing in the middle of the kelpie's back would be Snape. Yes, it was too small to be him, but maybe he'd shrunk himself to give himself the ability to move faster through the water. Anything was possible to Harry at this point, with his brain dazed by battle.

But it was Snape's owl.

Wings beating as furiously as if it didn't need to breathe, the bird was clinging to the kelpie with both feet, lowering its head to dig its beak into the skin. It didn't cause much more than small bleeding wounds of the kind that _Diffindo _could, and Harry started to swim forwards, assuming that he would need to rescue the ugly bird.

To Harry's amazement, the minute the beak dug in, the kelpie screamed, stiffened, and then began striking out with its hooves in uncoordinated, jerky movements, its eyes rimmed with white and its nostrils with a deep, sullen red.

Arms closed around Harry's waist. He started, but it was Snape. He leaned his chin casually on Harry's shoulder and watched the owl.

The bird continued to bite, and the kelpie reacted more and more helplessly. Its neck had pulled back and then frozen in an awkward position, an arch that showed the blood of the wound Harry had made drifting from it in a slick spiral. Its legs were locked together, and its body shook so hard that Harry thought he would hear the rattling of its ribs in a moment.

There was a vicious hoot, or at least Harry imagined he could hear that, as the owl snapped something vital in the kelpie.

The kelpie's body bulged and rippled and dissolved into what looked like smoky, dark water. For a moment, Harry thought he saw an image of Bellatrix in the smoke, reaching out desperately, as the locket had conjured images of him and Hermione when it was fighting its destruction.

The smoke faded. The owl popped past them, using its wings like flippers to swim for the surface. Snape pulled once on Harry's arm to indicate he should follow and was gone, rising, his limbs stroking the water in unexpectedly graceful movements.

Harry followed, trying to understand what had happened. It seemed clear to him now that he _had _been a distraction. Snape was the only one who could have commanded the owl into the water and told it what to do.

But why had the owl worked in the first place? It wasn't the Sword of Gryffindor. Its beak was made of metal, or something sharp, anyway, but Harry doubted Snape had stolen the blade of the Sword and melted it down to make the bird.

_To make the bird. He said he made it. _

_What _is _it?_

Harry shivered as his head broke the surface and he gasped again, having to duck back under. Obviously the potion that would allow them to breathe underwater hadn't worn off yet. He used the distraction to push past the suspicion that wormed in him as to what Snape could possibly have made the owl out of.

The owl seemed to have no problem breathing air, Harry noted, given that it had already left the water. But then, a bird that could swim like that in the first place would either hold its breath impossibly long or have other magical protections.

Snape's hand brushed along his ribs. Harry turned to him and saw him holding out another vial of potion, this one-at least, so Harry thought when it was so hard to see beneath the water-dark red.

Harry accepted it with a nod of thanks and tilted his head back to drink it. The next moment, he was poking his head out of the water and coughing frantically. Snape floated up next to him, a faint smirk on his face.

Harry decided to say nothing about the fact that Snape hadn't warned him. It would only make the git more smug. He swam towards the shore instead, feeling the green robe he'd worn for the Beltane ritual drag around him, sodden. Light cloth or not, they'd spent too long under the lake for it not to be waterlogged.

He climbed onto the shore and shook, trying not to feel like a dog, then leaned over to squeeze some of the moisture out of his hair. Snape climbed up beside him and spelled the light to vanish from his wand. His hand rested on Harry's shoulder as if he needed support, but Harry doubted that was it. He simply wanted to touch him.

_Not that I have much objection to that._

"Is Bellatrix coming?" Harry asked, when he had glanced up and down the shoreline and saw no sight of the witch charging towards them.

"I have no idea, Potter," Snape said coolly. Harry would have thought he'd lost the ardor he had shown during the ritual, except that his hand remained in place as they walked away from the lake. Harry swayed slightly, feeling heavier than he should, as he did every time after he went swimming. "I assume that she has magical protections that will tell her her Horcrux is gone," Snape continued, "but I am not sure what they are."

"Of course not," Harry said, surprised by the half-defensive tone in Snape's voice. "Otherwise you would have disarmed them."

Snape stopped walking and turned to stare at him. Harry blinked. Snape's lips had slightly parted, and Harry struggled to remind himself that probably wasn't an invitation for a kiss.

"So you think that I can take practical action at last," Snape murmured, and lifted one hand to trace the shape of Harry's mouth.

"I always thought that," Harry answered, wondering why his voice was so soft. "But now, I trust you to take practical action that will benefit me as well as Dumbledore or Voldemort or yourself."

Snape smiled, and the smile was not pleasant. That only made Harry's heart accelerate even faster. "I am not entirely changed," he said. "I have still my secrets, my loyalties that you know nothing of, and my own desires."

Harry nodded, locking eyes with Snape. "But as long as those desires include me for a little while," he said, "I don't care."

Snape leaned forwards as if he would speak into Harry's ear or ask him to renew the kiss. But a sound like tearing cloth cut the air, and Harry knew what it meant: Bellatrix had arrived.

He turned and put his back against Snape's without asking, watching steadily as she stalked towards them. Her hair flew around her face like the kelpie's mane had, and one of her eyes was shut and a mass of scar tissue, from the spell that Snape had used on her last time. She was screaming, or so Harry thought from her open mouth, but it was apparently so high-pitched that they couldn't hear it.

"Got any suggestions for destroying her?" Harry muttered.

"I had thought I would let you, as an Auror, do that," Snape murmured back. "My owl has his reasons for not coming near her, and I fear that I could not persuade her to swallow one of my potions."

Harry narrowed his eyes. Bellatrix had halted a few feet away from them, and her hair continued to drift. Her mouth remained open, too, allowing Harry to see more than he wanted of crooked yellow teeth, some of them pointed as sharp as fangs. _Maybe she took on some of the traits of the kelpie when it died, _Harry thought absently. "I don't know as many Dark Arts spell as she does, or as many that will work here."

"Then learn them."

Harry started to growl in frustration, but Snape's hand clamped his elbow, and he added, "I will not let you die."

Ron would have said he was a fool for being reassured by that. But Harry took a deep breath, nodded shortly, and aimed his wand at Bellatrix.

She spat a few words and raised a shield of shimmering black energy in front of her. Harry moved his wand. An idea had come to him, one that wouldn't work as long as she had that shield, but would work if he could "persuade" her out from behind it.

"Hello again, Bella," Harry said. "How does it feel to be mortal?"

She stared at him, and a dripping tongue shot out of her mouth to lick one of her pointed teeth. Snape's fingers parted around Harry's elbow and then slowly closed in again.

"I don't know why you bothered coming back," Harry told her, and felt a slow, vicious smile stretch across his face. He had never realized that he could enjoy taunting his enemies this much. "Your lord's gone. You'll never be able to resurrect him." He pulled his hair back so she could get a good glimpse of the scar on his forehead. "I was one of the things keeping him alive, but I died and returned, and he didn't. The last I saw of him, he was locked in a place that might only exist in my mind, in the form of a baby, crying forever. Did you think that I would be afraid of _you_ after that?"

She howled soundlessly and began to limp towards him. The shield blew apart around her.

Harry spun to the left, leaving Snape to take care of himself, and aimed his wand.

But she was moving too jerkily for him to precisely target the spell-especially because bloody Snape had taken away his _bloody glasses_-and so Harry had to pause and begin to stalk in a circle as she stalked him. Her mouth was fully open now, and her one good eye wild and staring. Harry watched as she lifted her head and clenched his wand. _Just a bit further, just a bit higher..._

But of course she couldn't oblige him, so she lowered her head again and crooned at him. "Little baby Potter. I am going to break you and take your head back to your Longbottom friend, so that he can look at it before he dies." She paused thoughtfully. "Or should I take his parents' heads? I know where to find them."

Harry breathed hard through his nose. She was trying to enrage him, and three years ago, before he had gone through the Auror training, it would have worked.

But if he had not completely mastered his temper, he had at least learned not to react to tactics he had just used. He shrugged with feigned indifference. "It doesn't matter, Bella, seeing as you'll never get my head."

"No, Potty? Then maybe I can get someone else's." She spun her wand between her fingers and gave him a grin that came straight out of nightmare. "Your friend Granger's, perhaps. Or your friend Weasley's. Or someone else, someone _even dearer _to you."

She turned and pointed her wand at Snape.

But for her to turn like that, she had to expose her throat. And Harry's instincts guided his hand where his eyes could not see.

"_Diffindo!_" he shouted, and his spell flew straight and true, a minor slice, catching Bellatrix across the jugular.

A minor slice, but that was all one needed when aiming there.

Bellatrix staggered and shrieked, pressing one hand against the vein as if she could stop the blood. The blood that was shooting high into the sky, forming a near-perfect arc, the way Harry would have liked to see the kelpie's blood do. She sagged to one knee, and aimed her wand in a wavering line that went somewhere between Harry and Snape.

Harry didn't intend to wait for her to come up with a spell. He aimed again, and this time took out her other good eye. A third spell sliced one finger off, and her grip on her wand, no longer as steady, faltered long enough for the wand to slip free. Harry Summoned it at once and snapped it in half.

When he looked up, she was lying on the grass, not dead yet, but dying. Harry limped towards her with hot satisfaction, intent on finishing it.

Snape got there before he did, stooped, and poured the entire contents of a clear potions vial over Bellatrix. She kicked once before her clothes, her face, and her skin began to dissolve. Smoke rose into the air.

Harry halted, heart banging so hard against his ribs it felt as if it would tear free in a minute. "Why did you do that?" he asked. "Why not leave me to finish it? And if you had a potion like that, why not take care of her yourself in the first place?"

"You needed to kill her," Snape said. "But you did not need to _destroy _her. In the end, you would not have forgiven yourself if you had." He rose and slid the vial back into his pocket, so cool and calm that Harry felt a kind of helpless anger thrum through him.

"I've killed people before," he snapped.

Snape lifted his head, and there was light in his eyes like a blow to the face. Harry stopped where he was, and thought he might have stopped breathing.

"But not in this way," Snape murmured, coming towards him now with a stride like a stalking lion, "not when they are down and dying, and you cannot use a quick spell to show them mercy." He halted a few feet from Harry, eyes at once bright and cautious, as if he wanted to come closer but wasn't sure of his welcome. "It would touch you in a way that I do not want you touched."

Harry worked hard to push away the stupid haze that wanted to cloud his mind at the thought of _touching._ "You don't know that," he said sullenly. "You haven't been around for three years. I might have destroyed someone."

"If you had, that light would not still shine in you," Snape said, and reached out, winding his fingers around Harry's wrist. Harry gasped and craned his neck back, feeling his throat work as if he struggled to swallow a piece of dry bread.

"And now," Snape said, "we have a promise to keep."

* * *

It wasn't easy.

Harry hadn't really expected it to be, not when his partner was Snape, but still, he had hoped for a little more comfort than this.

Snape had the lubricant, an oil in a vial that Harry just had to _trust _was not a deadly dangerous, poisonous ingredient that would change his arse into a writhing mass of toads and snakes. He had the cloth that he apparently intended to lie on, a thick robe that Harry eyed with some suspicion; he had never seen it in the house, and wondered why Snape hadn't just brought the blanket from the pallet. He had his ideas about what should happen, which apparently involved holding Harry down with iron hands as though he would run away.

Harry was glad for all that Auror training that Snape had been lauding some time ago, as it enabled him to flip Snape over and pin him against the robe in turn when he wasn't looking.

"I'm more than willing to have sex with you," Harry told Snape flatly, staring into his eyes as he blinked. "I'm _not _willing to be treated like a child, or a prisoner, while we do it."

Snape offered him a thin smile and nodded. "Then, by all means, Potter," he drawled, lying back on the robe and folding his arms behind his head, "show me what you can do."

_Git_. Harry glared, and wondered why his mouth was twitching up at the corners. Perhaps it had something to do with the presence of Snape's difficulty. After all, if he didn't have that trait, he wouldn't be a better lover, but a completely different person.

It didn't take that long to get the green robes off, one good thing, Harry reckoned, about their Beltane wear. When he had removed them, though, there was a long, awkward moment. They were face-to-face now, with Harry straddling Snape's legs, and there was no means to glance away or busy themselves with soap as there had been during the bathing.

Snape was long, thinner than Harry would have expected, the lines of his hips and legs so straight they echoed the scars on his neck. He was pale, too, though Harry didn't know if he could blame that on the necromancy spell obscuring the sun or something else. He had a slight smirk on his lips that never seemed to depart. No one could call him beautiful, not with the hook and arch of his nose or the sallow skin, ridged with bumps, creased with scars and wrinkles. There was a trace of grey in his hair that Harry hadn't had time to notice before.

It didn't seem to matter to Harry's urge to reach down and scratch a finger through the light fringe of hair leading down his chest.

Snape tilted his head back and sucked in his breath. His smirk was gone, or maybe his lips were just too wide at the moment to form it.

"Yes, I _thought _so," Harry muttered in satisfaction, though he'd thought no such thing. He'd just hoped that Snape would have some weak spots to make up for the way he had made Harry feel weak by removing his glasses.

He remembered something else then, and tangled his hand in Snape's hair, yanking. Snape shuddered and reached up, sliding his fingers back and forth over Harry's arm. If he had intended to hold him still, he didn't have the strength to do so.

"Want you," Harry said, lowering his head to breathe into Snape's ear, and then reached for the vial of lubricant.

He had had only one male lover he'd got this far with, but he knew a lot more of the theory than he did of the practice. He drizzled the oil over his fingers and reared back, sliding a finger into himself.

It hurt, but so what? As if Harry was going to show weakness in front of Snape. He might have earned the man's respect for now, but it wouldn't stay around for long if he whinged about something so simple.

Then Harry looked down, gritting his teeth and hoping that Snape didn't notice his watering eyes, and realized, from the fixated look on Snape's face, that Snape might have other things to notice.

Half of Harry's confidence returned with a rush and a roar when he realized that Snape's hand was twitching to reach towards him and that his mouth was open with desire. His cock was fully hard, something Harry had barely allowed himself to look at before, lying against his stomach and in a pool of moisture.

"You want me, too," Harry said, and shoved his finger fully in. That felt as if someone had shoved a burning poker up there, admittedly, but also too good to deny. Harry sighed and stretched his leg out, making his body wobble but giving himself more room to maneuver. "And you don't need to deny it," he added, when Snape opened his mouth as if he would. "I can see it well enough in your body."

"I was not going to deny it," Snape said, his voice little more than huffs of breath. "I was going to say how desirable you _look_ like this, above me, preparing yourself for my pleasure."

"And for _mine_," Harry said forcefully, jabbing in a second finger. He rotated his hips, groaning slightly.

Snape reached up and clutched his right hip in a grasp that felt like pincers. Harry hissed in appreciation. He would have liked to kiss him, but that would have involved bending over so far he probably would have fallen.

Another finger, and Harry decided he'd had enough. He hadn't quite found his prostate yet, but that was what Snape's cock was for. He dropped the vial carelessly beside them and smiled at Snape's muffled grunt of protest before he reached for his cock.

Snape's hand arrived there at the same time.

"I will help," he said, and the way his eyes burned told Harry that complaining would be stupid.

"If you _want _to," Harry murmured, and smiled as he saw Snape's cock twitch at those words. He lifted himself higher and then sank down.

Oh, God, that _ached _like nothing else. Harry kept his eyes tightly shut and breathed around the pain, then inward to it, clenching down and listening to the strangled cry that emerged from Snape's throat with satisfaction that he told himself outweighed the pain.

And it did. Almost.

Harry opened his eyes and gazed down, adjusting his position to see how far he could move before Snape would slip out of him.

Snape had the look of a man entranced, or possibly impaled. His hands had gone back to Harry's hips, and trembled there.

"The tightness..." he said, as if to excuse his reactions, and then closed his eyes as his breathing rasped and became harsh.

"Yes, people have told me that before," Harry said sweetly, mostly to watch jealousy shake through Snape before he began to lift and lower himself.

Snape made it through three complete cycles. Then, as Harry sank back down again, he trembled and began to thrust upwards. Harry reached down and mimicked Snape's hold on his hips. He couldn't hold him down, not completely, but he could regulate how high he could move.

"Not yet," Harry murmured. "I'm not ready for that yet."

And he wasn't. He wanted to bathe in the sunlight that was coming from above-brighter since they had defeated the kelpie and Bellatrix, or was that only his imagination?-and the warmth of the fire that had, once again, coalesced beside them.

He wanted to feel the long, slender slide of Snape's erection in and out of him, the way it thickened towards the base, the way that he gradually adjusted to it, and the tiny flashes of light when it brushed his prostate.

He wanted to savor the absolute _stunned _look on Snape's face.

"You never thought that you would be here, doing this with me," Harry said softly, beginning to move faster. He hadn't planned on that, but his body had plans of its own, and it was better not to defy them, Harry had found. "Does it disgust you?"

"No," Snape said. "It drives me mad with desire."

Harry hissed, his rhythm faltering, as those words did the work not all the hungry looks in the world could have done and sent him close to the edge of orgasm. He panted, holding still, trying to resist-

"Dear me, Potter. You seem to be having some _trouble_." Snape shoved into him, a dark laugh curling out of his throat.

"Bastard," Harry gasped, and flung himself down and into the race.

It was like falling into the water where the kelpie had been waiting for them once more. The world around the edges of his vision blurred and thickened; the fire seemed to come closer to them, but Harry didn't know if it actually did. His breath hurt his throat. His eyes fell open and shut with no regular rhythm, no holding back, and no control.

Snape was hammering into him from below, teeth grinding together, staring up at him as if he were going to fix Harry in this single moment in time by the sheer force of his gaze. His eyes were wild and white. They shone like the kelpie's. His hair splayed on the ground, bobbing when his head and his body bobbed.

Harry reached down and fisted his hair in it again, pulling Snape's head up so sharply that it must have hurt his neck.

Snape cried out and gave one more thrust. Then he arched off the ground like someone tortured with the Cruciatus Curse and stayed there, emptying himself, spending himself, _coming_.

_I made him do that, _Harry thought, closing his eyes in sheer enjoyment. He was close, he knew he was close, and the slapping of his cock against Snape's stomach was about to do it for him, but he needed-

Snape ran his thumb lightly over the head of Harry's cock.

"_Oh_," Harry whispered, and it was his turn to shiver and curl and arch and freeze as the pleasure roared out of him. He heard something pop in his spine. He didn't care. He knew Snape was devouring the expression on his face with his eyes. He didn't care.

It had never been like this before. So sharp it hurt, so intense it felt poisonous, so hot it seemed to melt his muscles. Harry knew he gabbled something, but not what. It didn't _matter_.

Nothing mattered during those wonderful seconds except the wonder.

_Then_ he was sagging forwards, and Snape was gathering him close, kissing him so fiercely that it nearly masked the sloppy sound of Snape sliding out of him, and Harry lolled his head to the side and kissed back.

Snape whispered into his ear, hissing desperately as though he was on a deadline for conveying the secret, "You have grown and changed into someone I could do this with. You hold your tongue. You use your intelligence. You occasionally leap to conclusions _other _than blaming me. You fight magnificently. You exhibit in a thousand subtle ways that you are not the child I knew. I never could have slept with the child."

"I never could have slept with the greasy bastard," Harry admitted, blinking his eyes open slowly. "You've changed, too." He touched Snape's chin and lips with one finger, wishing he could find other words.

Snape seemed to know why. "Sleep," he said.

Harry wondered if that was supposed to be part of the Beltane ritual, if they had really done everything for it that they were supposed to do. But he had used all his strength in fighting the kelpie and Bellatrix, and then impressing and fighting Snape. He closed his eyes and entered sleep with scarcely a sigh.

* * *

He woke alone.

Harry reached up and patted his face, then his sides. He was covered by the green Beltane robes and the robe that Snape had brought to lie on, as well as the blanket from the pallet. His glasses rested on the grass beside him. He was clean enough that Harry thought Snape must have cast charms.

And there was a thick envelope beside him.

Harry picked up his glasses and slid them on slowly. He was busy listening. He could hear the sound of the wind, and nothing else.

Of course, he was far enough from the cottage that that might not be a surprise. Snape could be cooking breakfast, or reorganizing his Potions ingredients, or chatting with that nasty owl of his.

But there was the envelope.

Harry reached out and slit it open slowly. What he found was a tied-together bundle of scrolls, all Potions recipes, and a much thinner letter. Harry glanced at the scrolls in bafflement and laid them aside, then lifted the letter to the light.

_Harry: _

_Included are the recipes for the potions used during our battle. I thought that your friend Granger might be interested in looking at them, to learn more about Potions-making. I would be pleased if they were duplicated and used in our world. And, of course, your friend Weasley will want to reassure himself that I did not poison you._

"Unexpectedly nice of you," Harry muttered, eyes narrowing as he scanned the next few paragraphs.

_I know the question you would most ask. I saw it on your face when we emerged from the lake, even if the events after that rather-drove it from your mind. _

Harry couldn't help giving a short flex of his hips, feeling the burn in his arse, before he went on.

_How could a mere owl defeat a Horcrux? I hinted to you that I had made the owl, but I did not tell you what of. I am somewhat surprised you did not recognize the material of his beak, considering that you had a close encounter with it in your second year._

"_Fuck_," Harry hissed. Fiendfyre wouldn't work in this place, Snape couldn't bring the Sword of Gryffindor here...

The owl had a beak made of basilisk fang. Harry drove his fist into his leg.

He did pause a moment to wonder why Snape hadn't simply unleashed the owl on the kelpie long before he arrived, but then shook his head. Bellatrix had had her own protections on the thing; Snape had said so. He probably hadn't wanted to risk his one weapon being destroyed before they had disarmed those protections with the use of the Beltane ritual.

_I apologize for not telling you this, but I trusted that you would go into battle with blind confidence that we would succeed. And you did._

_There is also, of course, the matter of how the owl will pierce the water. And this is the main reason that I have gone. I leave you an explanation as my final gift-the explanation that you would have divined on your own sooner or later, the explanation that is the reason I cannot stay._

_Dumbledore thought I became a Death Eater for spite alone, and the promise of power. That was my reason in the beginning. But soon I discerned that the Dark Lord had reason to believe in his immortality. I observed him carefully, and put together clues he let drop-invisible to everyone who did not know what he was looking for-together with my own knowledge of the Dark Arts. Particularly after I turned to Dumbledore, I knew that I was extremely likely to be placed in a situation that might cause me to lose my life. I did not wish to._

_Bellatrix and the Dark Lord were not the only ones who saw the advantage of placing a Horcrux in a living creature._

Harry shut his eyes. The owl that could pierce dimensions, the owl that could fly and breathe underwater, the owl that always did as Snape said and was loyal to Snape alone, the owl whose attitude to Harry had changed right along with Snape's.

_Fuck._

_I never did ask him how he had survived Nagini's bite. It wasn't-I thought it wasn't important._

Harry shakily opened his eyes and returned to the letter.

_I believe you have some idea, now, of the consequences that follow someone who has created a Horcrux, even if only one. I have so far managed to avoid ending up like Bellatrix, through a combination of mental discipline and applied potions. But you are a challenge to my mental discipline like no one I have ever encountered. I sit writing this while you sprawl beside me, breathing hard still, and I know that I will not be able to resist the temptation to take you in my arms._

_I must leave. For your sake, as well as my own. You will feel disgust towards me, anyway, once you know the truth. I murdered, in cold blood, to create my Horcrux. I have split my soul. You are a former Horcrux who _died _to rid yourself of a similar infection. What reason would you have to stay?_

_And I still value my life more than anything else._

_Within the cottage is a small, carved mental coin that will act as a Portkey to return you to your own world. It will work any time during the following fortnight._

_Do not try to find me. I wish you well._

_Severus Snape._

Harry sat there, letter trembling in his hands, until the boiling emotions in him finally reached a peak.

"Bloody bastard," he said aloud. "As if he had the right to _decide _that for me."

He stood up and glared in a circle, though he was sure Snape was long gone. It wouldn't be practical for him to remain and watch Harry sleep, and Snape was practical before he was anything else.

"Fuck you, Snape," Harry said, hoarsely, aloud. "There are two of us involved in this. You don't get to decide for both of us."

He walked quickly to the cottage. It was empty of all but a few cracked vials and stained cauldrons-and Harry's own robes and the carved coin Snape had promised. Harry dressed in silence, fuming.

_He could have gone anywhere. Who knows if he stayed in this world, or went back to our original one, or if there are other "disused pockets of history" that Voldemort knew about and he could go to?_

_He probably thinks that it's hopeless for me to try and find him, given all the places he could go. He probably thinks I'll refuse even to start, in righteous disgust over his Horcrux._

Harry felt his lips curve into a smile that he wished Snape could see.

_He doesn't know me very well, does he?_

He held out his wand before he touched the Portkey. "_Accio _feather," he said.

The clutter of dust and disused potions vials stirred slightly, and the feather the owl had dropped the night that Bellatrix and the kelpie attacked came soaring out of it. Harry caught it and ran the edge along his finger. It was metallic and drew a line of blood that didn't start aching until a few moments later.

"Let's see if this might possibly help me to track you," Harry whispered. "Let's see if perhaps you left it here to _entice _me. I can't believe that you forgot it completely, not with those eyes of yours."

He paused, then added, "Bastard."

_I am going to find you. And then we'll make the other decisions when that happens._

Harry reached down and grabbed the Portkey.

_Yeah, it seems hopeless, _he thought, as the world danced and vanished around him._ But I'm good at hopeless quests._

_And at saving souls._

**The End.**


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